Theo will be back for more
5- year deal worth close to $ 50M as Cubs look to lock up front office
PITTSBURGH — Just ahead of their most anticipated October in generations, the Cubs reached agreement on a five- year contract extension with the architect of this year’s World Series favorite.
Team president Theo Epstein agreed to a deal sources say is valued in the neighborhood of the fiveyear, $ 50 million package Andrew Friedman received from the Dodgers in 2014. The guaranteed base is said to be below that figure, but includes incentive and bonus clauses.
Epstein and chairman Tom Ricketts met four times over the summer before finalizing the deal Saturday and announcing it Wednesday.
“There was never any real drama throughout the summer,” said Ricketts.
The announcement comes in the final week of the Cubs’ first 100- win season since 1935, just four years after the first year of rebuilding under Epstein, which resulted in a 101- loss season.
“It’s almost uncanny how everything that we talked about five years ago, four years ago, three years ago [ came together],” Ricketts said. “With the exception of the fact we had an incredible second half last year that I don’t think anybody expected, things have kind of moved forward in a way that is just kind of as we planned. It’s been pretty incredible.”
By the end of the week, the Cubs plan to announce five- year extensions for general manager Jed Hoyer and top player development executive Jason McLeod.
“The goal is to keep a really strong executive team together and keep building on the success we’ve started to achieve,” said Ricketts, who in spring training said Epstein deserved to be the highest- paid operations executive in baseball.
Asked whether this contract met that expectation, Ricketts said he’s not sure. “But I think it’s in the range,” he said. “It’s competitive, and where it should be for someone who I think is the best baseball executive in the game.”
Epstein, 42, said the timing of the deal in the end came down to waiting until the Cubs had clinched. He called the deal a reflection of mutual trust built over the last five years and a validation of the work done by “literally hundreds of people” in the organization.
“It took a bit of a leap of faith in [ ownership] coming here, and they have lived up to everything they said they would do,” said Epstein, who is in the final year of a fiveyear, $ 18.5 million deal. “There’s no place I’d rather be.”
But how much longer does he expect to stick around?
When he left Boston after nine years as general manager, Epstein said he believed in the philosophy espoused by legendary football coach Bill Walsh: essentially that 10 years is a natural shelf life for a high- stress job.
“That certainly seemed like the right amount of time [ in Boston],” said Epstein, whose teams won two World Series there. “And I do really believe in a lot of what Walsh was writing about. But it’s too early to judge. So many things can happen between now and then.
“I’m really not thinking beyond trying to win a World Series for this organization.”
Ricketts was pleased to be assured five more years with the boss who has achieved four consecutive years of big- league improvement since that 101- loss season, while building a strong pipeline of hitting prospects in the system.
“I think a lot of people have this perception — I know I was sort of in that camp — that he was more of a deeply quantitative, number-cruncher kind of guy,” Ricketts said. “But I think the thing that I have seen the last five years, which is even more remarkable, is how well he handles people, how well he choose people for his [ front office] team, how well he chooses players for his team. And I think his ability to judge character and put together the right human resources on the same team has been truly remarkable.”