Chicago Cubs’ President of Baseball Operations Jed Hoyer spoke with the media before tonight’s game, getting into the realities of the weeks ahead. In short? Yeah, they’re very open to selling.
Among Hoyer’s comments on what has happened the last two weeks:
Cubs president Jed Hoyer: "Eleven days ago, we were fully on the buy side of (the trade deadline), everyone was calling about that. Obviously, people are now calling to see which players are available, so it's a very different scenario than we expected. Life comes at you fast."
— Patrick Mooney (@PJ_Mooney) July 8, 2021
https://twitter.com/MLBastian/status/1413252933001654276
The Cubs could, of course, get super hot, but things don’t look great if you’re being honest:
Hoyer (cont.) 2/2:
"…But when you're in this moment and you're playoff odds get into single digits at this time of the year you have to keep one eye on the future and think about what moves you can potentially make that can help build the next great Cubs team."— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubMLB) July 8, 2021
Hoyer is going to be on the phone a whole lot in the three weeks ahead, and he’s really got to nail the returns for so many reasons. It’s a critical time for the Cubs.
As for who gets traded, if anyone, Hoyer wouldn’t be wise to get into that, but he did say this:
Hoyer said he expects to talk with core players ahead of trade-deadline status/moves.
— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubMLB) July 8, 2021
I presume that means talking to them to make sure extensions can’t/won’t happen, but then also to give them a heads up on what might be happening by the deadline.
Longer-term, Hoyer is already telling folks that this isn’t going to be a “rebuild” situation:
Hoyer on #Cubs next phase as "rebuild" (2/2):
"We are going to have roster turnover. That was inevitable. … This is certainly not a rebuild by any kind of definition that we'd be using from our past."
— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubMLB) July 8, 2021
As we’ve already started to discuss, this is exactly the correct attitude for a Cubs team with so much financial flexibility. Maybe 2022 winds up another non-competitive year (so you sell at the deadline again), but tearing things down to the bones with the INTENTION of losing in 2022 should not be on the table right now. Instead, you enter into the offseason with the intention of going over a loaded free agent class and seeing what you can do in the short-term and long-term. Maybe you wind up one of those teams that turns in a surprising one-off competitive year, even as you’re inside of a longer-term retooling cycle with your farm system and big league roster. There are ways to find that balance in the offseason and in the run up to next July, when you can evaluate again.