What was supposed to be a season of reckoning ended up as a wrecked season when the Cubs couldn’t hone an edge sharp enough to chop even Theo Epstein’s word salad. Which is to say they let us draw our own conclusions about what it meant when they said they were going shake things up over the winter. Now we’re going to move on from this particular pun theme before I talk about anyone having egg on their face or how Victor Caratini looks so far this spring.
In any case, the idea behind not spending in free agency — well, other than the obvious financial concerns — was that increased adoption of player-led accountability initiatives would improve performance.