NASHVILLE – Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer is nostalgic about the days when teams would host each other in their Winter Meetings hotel suites, going through a tried and true protocol to knock out a trade.
“[Now,] you do most of the stuff on the phone,” Hoyer said Wednesday. “But it forces some action. And we definitely leave here with a lot more information about things we think we might be able to accomplish than when we got here.”
The gradual trend away from face-to-face meetings paired with Shohei Ohtani market-stalling free agency made for a trickle of moves rather than a spike. Finally on Wednesday, the Yankees made a splash, reportedly agreeing to a trade for Padres slugger Juan Soto.
As of Wednesday evening, as the Winter Meetings came to a close, the Cubs had yet to make a major-league acquisition. But the Cubs have “lines in the water,” as Hoyer put it. And they have several areas to improve.
“Now that they’ve gone through this period of building up their minor-leagues,” MLB super agent Scott Boras said in his annual Winter Meetings news conference, “I think they’re ready to look into major free agent talents that allow them to take a step above where they’ve been in the last year.”
The pitching market began to move early, so there’s more clarity on Cubs pitching targets than hitters.
The Cubs are in discussions with the Rays about a potential trade for Tyler Glasnow, sources confirmed, but contrary to some earlier reports, they had not discussed young utility player Christopher Morel as of this week. They’re also not the only team interested in the 30-year-old right-hander.
Trading for a player in his last year of club control like Glasnow makes sense from a cost control perspective — allowing the Cubs to allocate money to other areas of need. But it also gives the team time to evaluate young pitchers like Jordan Wicks, Hayden Wesneski, Cade Horton and Ben Brown, to get a better sense of the long-term impact they could make on the rotation.
There’s also still plenty of opportunity for teams to improve their rotations via free agency. Some of the top pitchers in this free agent class – Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery to name a few – were still available as of Wednesday evening.
Positionally, the Cubs are focussed on the corner infield. First base was a revolving door for the Cubs for most of last season. Late in the year, their solution was a platoon of Cody Bellinger and Jeimer Candelario, when he was healthy. Both players are now free agents.
One potential fit is Rhys Hoskins, who missed last season with a torn ACL. Boras, his agent, agreed at the GM meetings last month that Hoskins could be a candidate for a pillow contract in his first year back from injury. The Cubs worked out a similar deal with Boras last year for Bellinger, and Bellinger successfully used last season to boost his earning potential in free agency this year.
At third base, the Cubs at least have options already on their roster, in Nick Madrigal and Patrick Wisdom. But Madrigal, two years removed from surgery on his right hamstring, landed on the IL twice last season with a strained hamstring.
“When Nick was playing well and healthy, I thought he was really good defensively at third, we were a better team with him in the lineup,” Hoyer said. “He just got hurt a lot, and we weren’t deep enough to respond last year.”
The Cubs are also making plans to replace Bellinger’s offensive production.
Re-signing him could present itself as a way to both achieve that goal and address first base. Hoyer declined to talk about specific free agent targets, but he’s consistently spoken highly of Bellinger.
“We have a good relationship,” Hoyer said Wednesday. “We were texting the other day about his [most improved player] award. And he’s got nothing but positive thoughts about the organization; we have nothing but positive thoughts about him.”
