Welcome to the late night indie coffee shop where we’re debating all things baseball and Cubs until well into the wee hours of the next day. We’ve got all the beverages you can imagine, if you’re looking for a seasonal mug of cocoa, you’ve come to the right place. If you prefer your coffee spiked with Irish Whiskey, we can do that too. Come on in, take off your coat and warm up and enjoy yourself, just remember to bus your tables so we don’t leave a mess for Josh on Monday.

There’s an old episode of The West Wing where the central theme of the show is that really bad news gets buried by releasing it all at once, amidst boring news, on a Friday. Even better if it’s a Friday before a holiday weekend, when no one is really paying attention. After all, attention spans aren’t what they used to be and it’s the best way to make sure your bad news just kind of gets wrapped up in all the other things going on in the world today.

Friday, Dec. 20, mere days from the 2024 Christmas holidays, the official MLB team spending numbers for the purposes of the Competitive Balance Tax calculation have dropped. More on that after some tunes…

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is an iconic album. It’s an album in a way music is seldom packaged nowadays in the age of streaming. It’s meant to be listened to, from start to finish. It’s a concept album, each individual song can be enjoyed on its own, but they contribute to a coherent whole when they are listened to together.

There are dozens of articles debating the best tracks on Dark Side of the Moon and I’m not about to break down all of them. But most of those lists agree that one of the best and most recognizable songs on the album is Money:

It’s a statement on capitalism, work, the rat race, the grind, wealth, inequality, and yes, that desire all of us have sometimes to just blow it all up.

Money, it’s a crime
Share it fairly, but don’t take a slice of my pie
Money, so it’s said
It’s the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise
It’s no surprise that they’re giving none away

Years ago friends and I went to see Dark Side of the Rainbow, which is this album set to The Wizard of Oz. In that viewing, Money hits right as the movie turns to technicolor and honestly, it’s enough to give anyone chills:

Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Meanwhile in Chicago, Bob Nightengale is dropping the official MLB salaries for the purposes of Competitive Balance Tax calculations on social media. For reference the first tier for 2024 hits at $237 million, the second tier begins at $277 million:

That’s right, the Chicago Cubs went over the luxury tax by $2.85 million. As a reminder, this is the same Chicago Cubs team that had 83 wins and blew 26 saves in 2024, while missing the playoffs by six games and losing the division by 10.

It really makes you wonder what they maybe could have added for say, I don’t know, any amount between $239.85 million a year and $277 million a year.

For the record, the Cubs thrifty overage did save them quite a bit in terms of the tax itself, which is an extremely unsatisfactory explanation for barely dipping a toe in the CBT waters in 2024. You can see the tax amounts below, also from Nightengale (Click here for a link to Bluesky if you don’t see the post below):

I can really only think of a few reasons to go over the CBT threshold by so little. 1) It was a mistake. Someone forgot to carry a one somewhere or messed up a spreadsheet and the result was missing by $2.85 million. 2) They knew they were over the threshold, but the mandate from ownership was to keep the tax damage as minimal as possible. This would be a disastrous move from a fan/team perspective, but saves money for the owners. 3) They intentionally went over the tax as little as possible to claim they “had to” reset to get below the tax in 2025, and oh darn, I guess that means no big contracts this year.

It’s more than mildly infuriating that one of the most popular teams in baseball, a team that practically prints money at the corner of Clark and Addison, went over the CBT by such a small amount while barely missing the playoffs for the second year in a row.

So, what say you, BCB After Dark? Should the Cubs have spent more money in 2024?