Barring an extreme reversal in the win column in the next week, the Chicago Cubs’ direction is set for the trade deadline.
President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer doesn’t anticipate adding to improve the 2024 roster before the July 30 deadline “unless things change dramatically” over the next seven games, he said Monday before a 3-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers. Instead, the Cubs will focus on acquiring players who can help them in 2025 and beyond.
“Certainly we saw what can happen last year, so you sort of never firmly plant your feet,” Hoyer said. “You have to be able to be nimble.
“But where we are right now, we probably won’t do a lot of moves that only help us for this year. The expectation is that we have a good sense of where we are in our game plan going forward, but you never know what happens in seven games.”
While Hoyer left wiggle room for the Cubs to make a quick ascent in the National League wild-card standings in the coming days, sitting 3½ games out of playoff position through Monday, the reality is that for the second consecutive year a should-be competitive team is again trying to recover in late July from a prolonged stretch of poor play.
This also doesn’t change Hoyer’s projection for 2025, which will be similar to how the Cubs entered this season — with an expectation they would compete for the postseason.
“I feel really good about how we’re positioned for the future and beyond, and so I think our moves will reflect that at the deadline,” Hoyer said. “From a young talent standpoint, from a controllable player standpoint, I feel really good.
“We simply dug a hole with underperformance for those two months (May and June) and that doesn’t affect how I view the organization or how you view things going forward, but it certainly affects ’24.”
The Cubs face a challenge in threading the needle between maintaining a competitive roster to build upon in the offseason and being opportunistic at the trade deadline. The bullpen has the most potential for change with veteran right-handers Mark Leiter Jr. and Héctor Neris drawing interest, and left-hander Drew Smyly, who has a mutual option for next year, also makes sense to move. Left-handed-hitting outfielder Mike Tauchman and platoon slugger Patrick Wisdom could find suitors too.
Center fielder Cody Bellinger presents an interesting decision as he nurses a fractured left middle finger. Bellinger holds player options for the next two seasons and his power numbers have dipped since last year. It’s uncertain if he will be back before the trade deadline.
Bellinger was expected to hit on the field Tuesday if he came out of Monday’s cage work feeling good, which concluded four consecutive days of hitting. Although the hitting is progressing well, ramping up throwing hasn’t gone as smoothly. Manager Craig Counsell said that’s because of how Bellinger’s finger feels from throwing activities. But Counsell is cautiously optimistic about Bellinger’s progress.
“We haven’t done the velocity and the changing speeds, so there’s some hurdles to clear,” Counsell said. “But what he’s done this weekend was more than what we expected.”
The Cubs don’t have many players on expiring contracts, leading to one of the biggest questions over the next week: Will they attempt to move players with years of team control or no-trade clauses?
The no-trade group most notably includes Ian Happ (full), Seiya Suzuki (full), Jameson Taillon (partial) and Kyle Hendricks (10-5 rights). It all adds to the difficulty of navigating a market already limited by teams looking to buy only for this year and the Cubs’ efforts to help their roster past this season.
“There’s a value of that deal placed on the current year,” Hoyer said, “and a team that isn’t as focused on the current year may not value that part of the deal as much and therefore you can easily lose out to a team that’s willing to value that higher.
“When people talk about that kind of strategy, that’s the challenge is they may value ’25 and beyond the same, but if you don’t value the ’24 part as much, sometimes it can be hard to agree on the value.”
As the Cubs (48-53) conclude their final series against the Brewers this week at Wrigley Field, their performance versus division opponents has played a notable role in their disappointing record. Their 13-21 mark in the NL Central is the worst in the division.
“Some of that is when we play teams,” Hoyer said, “and that’s one thing we talk about so much in today’s game, there’s a lot more parity. There’s very few teams that are at the bottom of the league, and so much of it comes down to when you play teams — when you play them hot and you play them when they’re not — and unfortunately our pocket of playing the Central was in a bad stretch.”
If the scorching stretch the Cubs have been waiting on since April never arrives and their playoff drought continues — their last appearance in a full season was 2018 — major evaluations of the big-league roster await in the offseason. Hoyer isn’t at the point where he is ready to delve into what could change in 2025 to better position them to avoid a similar outcome.
However, he made clear they can’t ignore what happened through the first 100 games this season and how that might affect their player evaluations. While Hoyer isn’t wavering on his big-picture perspective of the organization’s standing and outlook, the Cubs might be facing some harsh truths about players they have invested in and the way they have constructed the major-league roster.
“We probably have different opinions on some players than we did on opening day,” Hoyer said. “That would only be natural. You probably have different opinions on certain positions that may feel like we were all set now at that position or may feel like we need to address.
“So of course you’re getting new information, new data every single day to make those decisions, and things do shift. It’d be crazy to say nothing has changed. Of course things have changed.”