Jed Hoyer Speaks: Central Standing, Trade Deadline, Stroman, Hughes, Hendricks, Davis

Jun 15, 2023

Chicago Cubs President Jed Hoyer spoke at Wrigley Field last night, and I thought it worth sharing some of what he had to say. You can read his full comments here, here, here, here, and here, among other places.

On the overall state of the team, the division, and how you evaluate the Cubs’ performance in this kind of landscape: “Certainly it’s weird to be at a point where you say that about a division in the middle of June where I think anyone can still win it but no one has pulled away or even pulled away from .500. That’s one of the challenges of evaluating your team. You’re evaluating where you are in the standings but you’re also evaluating how you’re performing. Some of that is component numbers but some of that is where you are in relation to .500 as well. All those things are a factor moving forward.”

As in, when it comes time to make buy/sell decisions, it won’t JUST be about the division, or the standings, or the team’s record, or the team’s current performance. It’s a combination of all those things, plus how you project them to do in the months ahead.

More on that: “I think we have a ways to go. I mean, we have six full weeks, really, to get to the end of July (and the trade deadline). A lot happens in that time. We’ve only played, what, 10 weeks so far? We have six more to play to get a feel for where we are. I think we have to evaluate all of that. But yeah, obviously, given where we are in relation to .500, I think in a normal season, we would be looking at a much steeper climb than we are right now. Obviously, that’s a fortunate thing (that we’re not).”

Hoyer’s non-comment on Marcus Stroman’s Twitter urging on contract extension talks: “Honestly, like I talked about a million times, we just don’t talk about those things. Obviously, he made that public. Listen, I love the fact that he wants to be here. We’ve had conversations about it. I’m not going to disclose what we’ve talked about. But there is dialogue. We’ll keep that in-house …. We don’t talk about negotiations outside of our four walls. We talk to the agents and we talk to the players and in this particular case, he tweeted it out, which I guess that changed the dynamic, but it doesn’t change our stance on it, which is we’re just not going to comment. There’s zero benefit for the relationship with them to comment on it and there’s zero benefit from the negotiating stance to comment on it.”

Hoyer said it’s unknown whether knee surgery is going to be necessary to relieve Brandon Hughes’ ongoing discomfort, which has been a real hindrance to his performance this year. Right now, it’s just about stepping back and re-evaluating while Hughes is on the IL.

On Kyle Hendricks’ near no-hitter: “I wish I had been there. That was so fun to watch. And I found myself rooting so hard for him to get it, because it’s so hard for a contact pitcher to have a chance at that. And then obviously it would have been such a wonderful thing, given how hard he had to rehab and come back.”

On outfield prospect Brennen Davis, who has been out for the past week with an unspecified injury, and whose quality of contact this year has otherwise been quite bad: “Over the next few days, we’ll probably have some more news on that. He’s seeing doctors. Just trying to get to the bottom of… he’s been out there, he obviously hasn’t been impacting the ball the same way he did. The power hasn’t been there. Just trying to get to the bottom of it, because we’ve seen him when he’s right and how impactful he can be. That’s not where he is right now. We just need to get to the bottom of what is ailing him physically and what we can do about it. … It’s not back related.”

written by

Brett Taylor

Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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