MLB won’t sanction Cubs for Joe Ricketts flap
GLENDALE, Ariz. — During his annual spring-training address to media covering the Cactus League in Arizona, commissioner Rob Manfred said Major League Baseball looked into the Joe
Ricketts email flap but plans no action against the Cubs or their ownership.
‘‘We have talked extensively with the Cubs about this topic and are fully aware of the situation,’’ Manfred said of the racist and Islamophobic emails hacked from Ricketts’ inbox and published by Splinter News. ‘‘Mr. Ricketts, if you follow the ownership structure back, really has . . . no day-to-day role in the club nor control over it, and it is a bit of a reach for baseball to be involved given that set of facts.’’
Joe Ricketts provided the money to buy the Cubs and retained a financial interest in them, but his daughter and three sons represent the team’s top leadership.
There is MLB precedent for taking action against ownership for racist behavior. MLB suspended Reds owner Marge Schott from day-to-day operation of her team for more than two years in the late 1990s for pro-Nazi comments, part of a long history of racist behavior.
Unlike Joe Ricketts, Schott was the managing general partner, president and chief executive officer of her team, as hands-on as any owner in baseball at the time.
Machado Effect
By the time Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer and manager Joe Maddon escaped the traffic jam on Interstate 10 and arrived fashionably late to the annual Cactus League media event, much of the media had created its own traffic jam of microphones and cameras around Padres GM A.J. Preller and manager Andy Green.
The Manny Machado Era has begun in San Diego.
Hoyer, who was the GM of the Padres before joining the Cubs, only could shake his head in amazement at the small-market team’s 10-year, $300 million signing.
‘‘In 2010, my payroll was $38½ million when I was the GM of the Padres,’’ he said. ‘‘Times have changed. One player’s making that in one year.’’
Beyond the personal connection of one of their executives, the immediate impact of the Machado signing for the Cubs is that it means dealing with one more star player in the National League.
And it means the already-deeper league got one team tougher. The Marlins might be the only bona fide tankers left in the NL.
‘‘It’s hard to find a team that’s not competitive, that doesn’t have a chance,’’ Hoyer said. ‘‘That means some lower win totals are probably going to win some divisions or be in the wild card. You’re not going to look at your schedule and know you’ve got some easy runs.
‘‘In ’15 and ’16, for example, in the National League, you could look at the schedule, and you’d have some stretches where you felt like, ‘We’ve got to go 11-3 in these two weeks to feel good about it.’ That’s
not going to be the case anymore.’’
Coming soon
Ben Zobrist, who has been an excused absence from camp as he tends to a personal matter, might be in camp in the next several days. He’s not expected to be delayed in his preparation for the season.