Free Agents are not the Cubs Problem

As I pointed out before, the primary problem of the latter years of the Hendy regime in Chicago was not the overspending on free agents. The better culprit is the complete incompetence in drafting and developing young talent. Here is more support for this view (see the Table 3 at the end). In fairness, this study probably would underestimate the negative impact of the Soriano contract since the last three years of his contract are not included. However, the overall point is that the free agent signings were not the biggest problem of the Hendry years.