Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts is one of the drivers of the upcoming management versus labor conflict in Major League Baseball. I’ve long thought so, just extrapolating from his actions and the tone of his public comments rather than the substance, since his remarks generally don’t contain any more telltales than Jed Hoyer’s.
There are more factions and overlaps in that very complex narrative, but buried in an excellent Jon Greenberg Athletic feature {$} is this little bit that tends to confirm my suspicions:
I don’t know if I share Egeland’s optimism about the Cubs signing Tucker, but I think “win-now mode” is here for the next five years and if chairman Tom Ricketts gets his way in the upcoming labor battle with the players, we might see even more restrictions on top spenders like the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees, thus evening the field for the less-profligate Cubs owners.