Jed Hoyer didn’t want to have this much time for offseason planning. The Cubs president of baseball operations had hoped his focus in October would be on a postseason run.
“But certainly we’ll get right to work,” he said in his end-of-season new conference Tuesday.
The Cubs just barely missed the playoffs, despite the expanded format, with a 83-79 record after a September collapse.
“We were an above average offensive team,” Hoyer said, pointing to an offense that finished the year ninth in offensive WAR (48.8), according to FanGraphs, “… we had really good run prevention. The shell of a really good team is there.
“Obviously we have to make additions, and we have to find ways to improve. But I feel really good, given where we were a year ago, [that] the number of pieces we have that are contributing players on a really good team is there, and we just need to supplement that.”
Of course, not all of those players are guaranteed to return. Cody Bellinger, the Cubs’ best hitter this year, is entering free agency. So, the Cubs will need to either bring him back or replace his production to avoid taking a step back.
Highlights from Jed Hoyer's presser:
— Maddie Lee (@maddie_m_lee) October 3, 2023
"You can't call something that falls short of your goal a success. So ultimately, we have to live with that. I know it'll motivate me all winter, and ... talking to our players and coaches and front office, I know it's going to motivate them."
The rotation is expected to remain mostly intact. Veteran right-hander Kyle Hendricks has a club option for 2024, but the Cubs are expected to bring him back either with that option or by reworking a new deal. Right-hander Marcus Stroman has to decide whether to opt out of his contract.
“If he chooses to come back, certainly the second half of 2022 and the first half of this year were exceptionally good,” Hoyer said. “He’s a really good pitcher. And as we’ve learned, you can never have enough good pitching.”
On the position-player side, the Cubs have a core group of players who are signed through at least 2026: shortstop Dansby Swanson, second baseman Nico Hoerner, right fielder Seiya Suzuki and left fielder Ian Happ.
“Looking back, that was really critical to get those guys signed to extensions,” Hoyer said of the deals the Cubs struck with Hoerner and Happ this year. “And I don’t think we’d feel the same way right now about that core group if Ian was a free agent, if Nico only had two more years.”
Any conversations about the offense, however, inevitably turn back to Bellinger. He was the Cubs’ “top target,” as Hoyer put it, entering last offseason.
“That was one where all that planning this time of year really paid off,” he said, “that we had watched a ton of video on him, and we focused on him. And sometimes those plans go exactly as you hope, and sometimes a player re-signs with his current team, or something happens and it blows that up.”
This year, they won’t be able to count on Bellinger’s decision to come down as an early piece of the puzzle. With the season he had this year, he made himself highly sought after.
He became one of the focuses of Hoyer’s nearly hour-long news conference Tuesday, along with manager David Ross, the September swoon, and offseason spending.
Replacing Bellinger?
“We’d love to bring him back,” Hoyer said of Bellinger. “But in a world where that’s somewhat uncertain, we do have to figure out a way to replace that offensively.”
When meeting with Bellinger on Sunday, Hoyer said he told the center fielder: “It’s rare to have a guy come in on a one-year deal, and have that kind of connection with the fans by the end of the middle of season. It was really special.”
Ross’ season
Hoyer has stood by Ross all year, and Tuesday was no different.
“Do we have disagreements, and do we have heated conversations? Of course we do,” Hoyer said. “But you will with any manager. They have to make so many different decisions. They have so many things to weigh. So obviously, we work hard all the time to give him the right information. And if there are things that we disagree with or are things that we can do better, he’s very open minded to that, and he’s constantly trying to improve. But ultimately, we were very pleased with the job he did this year.”
Spending
Teams are generally wary of revealing too much about their offseason budgets. When asked if he was willing to pass the Competitive Balance Tax threshold next year, chairman Tom Ricketts simply said: “We’ll see where that shakes out.”
Hoyer offered a little more.
“It’s both a budgetary question, but also we want to make sure that strategically you do it at the right time,” he said. “And so we’ll have those discussions. But there’s no organizational mandate against it, as has been shown in the past.”
