Jed Hoyer, president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs, spoke with reporters (including Bruce Levine of of 670 The Score and Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic) on Friday about the upcoming offseason. Hoyer said that the organization plans on being “really active in free agency,” though also hedged that by saying they plan to “spend money intelligently.”
One could be forgiven for being a bit skeptical of Hoyer, given how his tenure as president has gone so far. After taking over for the departing Theo Epstein in November of 2020, it took him just over a month to trade away the team’s ace, Yu Darvish, a move that seemed entirely motivated by ownership-mandated cost savings and was essentially unprecedented. If that wasn’t a total wave of the white flag on the season, then the trade deadline was, as the Cubs shipped out almost all of their curse-breaking core by trading away Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez and Kris Bryant, as well as Craig Kimbrel and a few others.
After almost a year of stripping the roster down, it’s hard to believe that the front office will suddenly turn around and spend at the top of the market in an attempt to make a quick return to competitiveness. However, there’s not going to be much stopping them from spending this winter, financially speaking. Due to all the aforementioned trades, they now have just over $40MM in guaranteed money on the books for 2022, most of which is going to Jason Heyward and Kyle Hendricks, per Roster Resource’s Jason Martinez. Willson Contreras and Ian Happ will be owed arbitration raises and add modest sums to that, but that will probably only push the total to the $60MM range. The Cubs haven’t had a payroll below $100MM since 2014, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, when prorating 2020’s payroll over a full season. So, there could be lots of money for Hoyer to throw around, if ownership allows him. But based on the past year, that’s a big if.
Given all the holes on the roster created by the teardown, it seems more likely that the club will make a few modest signings and continue to give most of their playing time to cheaper and controllable players. With the departure of the previous core, they didn’t really have highly-touted prospects to call up and fill the void. Instead, the playing time has gone to late-bloomer types like 30-year-old Rafael Ortega and 29-year-olds Patrick Wisdom and Frank Schwindel. Although those guys have fared well in their auditions since the deadline, they’re generally not the kinds of players that front offices consider building blocks.
In addition to the roster, Hoyer will also be dealing with other matters, such as signing a general manager. In Sharma’s piece from The Athletic, and a separate piece from Levine, they say the plan is to make a hire before the general managers’ meetings. A date is not yet set for this year’s meetings, though they usually take place annually in November. Levine’s sources say the Cubs have “had contact with upward of six individuals” about the position, though no names are mentioned.
As for the manager’s seat, Sharma suggests the plan there is more straightforward. David Ross is about to finish the second season of a three-year deal, though he could be a candidate for an extension. When asked about the possibility of an extension, Hoyer said, “I think that’s a question for next week… But it’s a fair question next week. And like I said, I love working with him. He’s already an excellent manager, and I think he has a chance to be really special in his job.”
All in all, it will surely be a very different offseason than the Cubs have had in some time, with one competitive window now firmly closed and all efforts focused on opening the next one.
“…the Cubs have ‘had contact with upwards of six individuals’…”
So, seven?
“There could be lots of money for Honey to throw around” the amount of typos in these articles is actually astounding. The quality of this site has absolutely tanked and it now reads like a fan blog…. can anybody take 5 mins and proofread these articles? Every single one seemingly has multiple errors, typos…. come on guys get it together.
rols1026 – The quality of writing here is much better than Cubs fan blogs such as Bleed Cubbie Blue and Bleacher Nation. The lead Cubs writer for Bleacher Nation often sounds like an emo fangirl with diarrhea of the mouth and a bad case of the feels. The old crusty codger in charge of Bleed Cubbie Blue is still stuck in 2016, and one of the other writers at BCB who focuses on prospects can’t seem to form a useful coherent thought 90% of the time.
Oh I’m sure there are worst fan blogs out there. I’m not saying this site has reached the lowest quality possible. But it has dropped from good quality to fan blog quality and that is not a good thing. They just don’t proofread anything
Somebody complaining about a free service..
‘Merica
Al Yellon at Bleed Cubbie Blue is stuck in 1976.
That would be “worse” fan blogs, not “worst.” Also, there should be a comma after “Oh.” Come on, rols2016. Get it together. It shouldn’t be difficult to proofread your rants before posting. Grammarly is your friend.
One is a professional writer, one is not. Different standards.
Somebody needs to put grandpa to bed.
Hey look everyone, it’s Cey Hey with another nonsensical post! Apparently commenters are to be held to the same grammatical standards as the literal writers who get paid! Interesting stuff as always dude…. lol
The writer is new and I think has a background in mostly theatre and film, so cut him some slack. Nobody is perfect right after starting a new job.
Brett Taylor turns out two to five articles a day on Bleacher Nation, often more. His role there is to be fast and prolific. To get to this goal, he goes with a blog-style stream-of-consciousness, off-the-cuff writing style. He’s supposed to read/see/hear everything and blog it all out, and he does. And he’s funny.
Taylor isn’t failing to write tightly focused beat writer style stuff, it’s just not what BN asks him to do. I do not doubt that if he worked for a newspaper or The Athletic and traveled with the team and had to write 2-4 articles a week instead of 2-4 a day, his style would be different.
That said, he’s not the only bulk output Cubs blogger out there, but he’s the best. Cubs Insider has its moments, but isn’t as fun. Bleed Cubbie Blue isn’t as sharp in its observations or as progressive in its understanding of stats and the game. Fansided’s Cub writing mostly seems to exist to have obvious/unlikely trade/FA market articles you have to click five times to read all the way through.
If you don’t like any of those, maybe the problem is that you don’t like blogs. That’s okay. You can still read the stuff at The Athletic or Gordon Wittenmeyer at the Sun Times, or whatever.
The line I quoted was itself quoted from someone else, so you can’t blame the writer of this article for it. I was just commenting on it because “upwards of six” seemed to me like a silly way for that person to put it.
rols: We don’t care about typos. We have better things to do. We care about talking baseball. I try to proofread my comments and I still miss typos.
You’re that close to Jed? Honey?
This website has shown that there is a lot of crossover between fans of baseball who enjoy reading about transactions/rumors and utterly obnoxious pedants. Which isn’t all that surprising if you think about it
“There’s not going to much stopping them from spending this winter.” I was the one the other day giving Darragh praise for the “Canadian Birds/Pale Hose” article. I even said I couldn’t wait to see what he comes up with next. I wish I had waited longer now, though. Typos happen all the time. I get it. It’s a shame when a writer types up an article and doesn’t even bother to proof read it before they put it out. I know these guys are rushed with everything they have to put out there but still… These are real articles read by a lot of people. All you have to do is read your own article one time to realize your own mistakes and it takes all of 20 seconds to edit them. TC Zencka is actually even worse. I’ve seen him actually title an article “Acuna to miss playoffs with arm fracture.” The article was supposed to be about Jose Urena. Acuna was healthy and about to start the playoffs. All day that article was up. It had a ton of nonsensical spelling errors as well. For hours and hours people kept questioning how Acuna fractured his arm and how the Braves star player was going to miss the playoffs. TC never proofread his own article and he never even glanced at the comments. This kind of stuff is a clear lack of effort or pride in your work. I feel like sometimes the MLBTR leadership focuses too much on whether or not someone has a degree and nowhere near enough on the quality of work they will (or won’t) produce. It’s one thing to type a comment and just hit send without caring about the spelling errors or blatant factual falsehoods. It’s something totally different to do that with an article you are paid to type for a career knowing many people will read as a source of information. Tim Dierkes, please stop focusing on hiring people with college degrees specifically. It shouldn’t even really matter if they can write without one. It’s causing you to hire people who clearly don’t care about the topics they write about. At least not enough to put average effort in. I know several better writers who went to college but didn’t graduate. They are much better sports writers than some of your staff because they truly care about the topic and they always put the effort in to make sure there aren’t obvious mistakes. There’s been too many articles where the writer types enough to make it look like they are trying but the end result looks like they are just phoning it in.
I’m going 6.5
One name- Jeff luhnow.
This place has definitely went to sh&t in the past couple years but its the posters not the writers who have swung the pendulum
*Warning*. The comments associated with this article have virtually nothing to do with baseball.
You know how, when you totally slay (usually) an elitist online, when you just destroy their argument and “logic” and annoy them with facts when they want to argue emotions, how they then point to some unimportant grammar as if to defend their lost debate? Yep, lol. They are all posting on this article.
One of the Hoyers got autocorrected to honey in case you want to go back and change it. Gave me a chuckle.
Can’t ask statheads to write properly.
Or lawyers.
This site used to have good writing. Now it reads like a bunch of teenagers on their blogs. They don’t proofread anything and it shows.
Then dont come to this site anymore.
So I should just not get baseball news because the quality of the writing is trash? Great advice lol. Or maybe they could just take 5 mins and proofread their articles? Why would you defend them when they clearly aren’t even putting in the minimum effort…
It took me less than 1 min to find the error. I usually find multiple errors per article and I’m not some grammatical or spelling whiz. It just shows ineptitude and lack of care. There’s zero excuse considering how many people would do this job well. The “if you don’t like it you can leave” mentality is incredibly toxic. You sound like a Trumper with a comment like that lol
The forst sentence you typed, yes to that. There are plenty of other baseball websites to go to. Everyone makes mistakes, but these guys are great, and consistent. Please, if you feel so strongly about the apparent poor quality, go someplace else. No one will be upset if you do.
You getting all work up over a couple grammatical errors is incredibly toxic. And now you are trying to spout political stuff. And you call me toxic, lol. Just shows how little you know, because I voted for Biden.
I didnt say who you voted for. I said the “if you don’t like it you can leave” mentality is the exact same as Trumpsters. So if you don’t want to sounds like them then don’t say stuff that makes you sound exactly like them…. “everyone makes mistakes” is one of the lamest excuses I’ve ever seen. Go find me Fangraphs articles that have this many consistent errors. These guys are not great, and definitely not consistent. Unless you meant consistently making errors? Then I totally agree
Mistakes happen. Constant spelling and grammar errors should not. The fact that you just think that’s normal and good for a site where people are paid money to write then idk what to tell you. Again, go find me this level of ineptitude on Fangraphs, mlb dot com, or any other similar site. You can’t.
Or a Biden being his usual big idiot self who just wants to blame everyone else for his ineptitude
Things I’m here for: baseball news, updates and rumors.
Things I’m not here for: spelling and English perfection.
If I can understand what they are putting out there, and they are getting the point across while putting out credible info, I don’t care about their grammar or spelling.
If a beat writer or journalist has a typo on Twitter, do you think they are trash too? Or as long as you get the info you’re looking for and it’s not horrific grammar/writing – who really cares? Go start your own website if you think you can do it better OR go kick rocks.
I like the second option.
No apostrophe in *didn’t*
An extra “s” in,*sound*
You forgot the period needed to end your babbling comment.
Pots and kettles.
F Joe Biden chants echoing throughout college football stadiums across the country and at the Rider Cup today.
Obviously you wear a ‘red’ hat, so as far as intelligence goes – you have absolutely no room to talk. Lol.
@gcg27
As a politician and President, Biden hardly has exclusivity when it comes to “ineptitude”.
Good god, why do stupid people have to always devolve conversations into dumb political rants… smh
When you say stadiums throughout the country, you do realize the southern belt doesn’t consist of all 50 states, right?
You’ve been ratioed rols. Walk away, the people are not on your side
no one cares, stick to talking baseball
I don’t think there is anything wrong with criticizing low effort work if the intention is to actually improve the quality of the site instead of just harping on it to harp on it.
Columbus,Evanston and College Station are in the south?
Jihad Joe is doing a bang up job
Hahahah
You never stated those colleges before, so there was no way of knowing thats what you were referring to.
Hey look you both proved that you aren’t that smart, get a room
This ridiculous thread must be setting mute records.
It’s almost hilarious how much some people care about a typo or a misplaced comma. Did it effect you’re ability to comprehend the article? No, I thought not. Also can we for the love of god stop talking about politics? There is plenty of that going on elsewhere.
I’m fairly certain Tim would agree that tàking five minutes to proof articles is constructive criticism. rols1026 didn’t call the site trash, he said he wished more care was taken on the articles published here.
They post and then proof read after often.
It’s about speed…have to keep up with Twitter.
That, and multiple stories going on, chats, etc.
So rather then make you wait, they hammer it out quickly.
If they’re going to spend $40M this off-seasons seems like they should dish out a lot of 1-2 years deals to guys who they could flip at the deadline if they put up good numbers. Buying two star-level free agents isn’t going to get them anywhere.
They have 40 million already committed. They could spend double that.
The suggestion is that with arbitrary raises they’re looking at about $60m on the books and haven’t spent under $100m in years. So if they get to $100m, they’re spending about $40m on free agents. They could blow past $100m of course.
*arbitration
Of course they’re going to blow well past $100M! The article was never claiming otherwise.
They should be spending 4x that.
Pt57 spending doesn’t equal winning. If it did they woulda won more this past year.
I’m thinking the same thing.
1-2 year deals and young pitching is their likely approach.
They could target guys who missed out on big deals and have to settle for higher priced pillow contracts.
You know the type of deals that have the stupid fans on here chanting collusion. Just don’t offer more than a year.
The abridged version of this article could read: “2022 will involve little spending, lots of bargain hunting. Another non-competitive year with Yes-Man Ross at the helm”.
The Cubs will sign guys to fill the roster but no one who demands a lot of money and they will continue to be a self imposed train wreck in 2022. What has Hoyer seen that has shown him that David Ross is an excellent manager? For a year and a half he was buddy buddy with his friends on the team who underperformed and needed a kick in the butt which he didn’t provide. Now he manages a team which is mostly nothing more than a poor AAA squad where he often puts guys in situations where they can fail. Ross record as a manager will never be .500 again
Thanks for your insight, Mr drive through assistant manager.
I love the simpletons here who criticizes mlb managers to get a chance to manage crappy teams. When they lose because of lack of talent I’ll make them read all the stupid criticism and smile and laugh.
I agree. Maybe they should start with an experienced manager that has a clue. Hiring Ross was a huge mistake.
You all are missing the huge gift Darragh just gave us. Jed Hoyer’s new nickname for now and forever more is, “Honey,” and I for one couldn’t be happier. It is a hilarious nickname.
Or they could proofread their articles? Just a thought.
You need to chill dude. Let this man have his funny comment. Jed Hoyer will forever now be Honey Hoyer
I’m glad you are satisfied with trash. Maybe they’ll hire a middle schooler next. You’ll love it
You really want your money’s worth out of this free content
Hey, Honey Hoyer used to work the strip in Buffalo….she was working on her doctoral thesis (nuclear physics) of course…. she told me that during the lap dance….
Dumpster Divin’ Honey!
No one gives a damn about your ridiculous expectations, let alone the writers on this site.
True story. Went to a bachelor’s party at a strip club. Stripper’s song was “Another Brick in the Wall Pt 3.”
“We don’t need no education…”
That line is actually in part two, but that is a very weird song for stripping…
You said that multiple times. STFU.
First, why would I want the opinion of a blogger than writes about as well as my third grader? Second, why would the Cubs wait to spend? There is no wave of talent coming like they had in 2015. The Ricketts have consistently spent near the top of the league since then. They knew this year would be a transition and they needed to re-set the luxury tax standing. They sold their one prime asset when value was high (instead of waiting like they did with everyone else and then watch the value diminish). And they have spent over $1B on Wrigley, Marquee, the hotel, rooftops, etc. So waiting 3-5 years to rebuild only gives them a worse ROI. They can rebuild in 1-2 years so long as they spend wisely (look at the Giants). So…I take Hoyer at his word – Cubs will be active, but won’t over-spend. Go Cubs!!!
“… want the opinion of a blogger than writes about as well as…”
Something, something, glass houses, etc etc…
Ummmm the commenter isn’t paid to write for their job??? Nice false comparison though lol
Dude for real. The quality of this site is abysmal. I have no clue what happened but it’s gone straight into the ground. Sad state of affairs here
Then go to a more inclusive and happier site where all biden supporters check grammar as a hobbie but no real desire to get the news, no one will miss u… and f biden.
Really strange road you took to get to a bad political take
Take your political nonsense elsewhere. Your input doesn’t even apply here. Go back to Gab where you came from.
Go back to Twitter with the rest of the emotionally unstable fools who can’t handle opinions that don’t align 100% with their own.
Wow dude, you’re sad enough to create another account to complain about the writing on this site? You even got the same 3rd grader comment going here. For a guy so hell bent on grammar, you’re sure quick to back a guy (yourself) who has plenty of grammatical errors in his comment. You seem like the real 3rd grader in this equation.
Seager, Bryant or Belt AAV – $20-30m
Castellanos or Starlin Marte (sp?) AAV – $20-25m
Robbie Ray AAV $22-27m
Jon Grey – AAV $18-20m
Even if every AAV is maxed or slightly below you are well under the luxury tax and Hendrix and Heywood coming off by the end of 2023.
They don’t need to spend big on position players. Sign Baez back yes, at this point he might be something like 4/98 with a team option 22mil/2 mil buyout sorta to thing. Then everything else on pitching.
Baez is not the type of player I’d make an investment in, even 4 years. As soon as that bat speed starts to slip, he’ll be a below average hitter.
While I didn’t follow the Cubs closely this year, between the pre-season Darvish trade and the fire sale at the deadline, they had to have picked up some prospects in those trades who are close to being major league ready, correct? If they opted for A, A+ or DSL talent as the major returns for their assets then that would clearly show their intentions of a full rebuild. If that is the case, Contreras will be moved this off season too for more young talent. Hopefully they got some decent talent in return that is ready to contribute in 2022. If not, then next season is going to be a 90+ loss season for the Cubs. Ricketts has destroyed this team by investing so much in real estate and getting underwater. Might be time for him to sell the team if he can no longer afford to run it properly.
Management got payroll down with only one bad contract (Heyward) left on the books. They have money coming in for tv deals and ventures around the park. I don’t see them spending big dollars as they won’t expect it to move the incoming revenue
Maybe Cubs management figures they have 95 years before they owe the fans another world series appearance.
Their controversial drafting tactic led them to the World Series and they barely won it. Then, the whole thing collapsed. Sad.
They used it all up too quickly. Hated the Chapman trade but understand he was necessary to win it all. But can’t get past the Quintana trade. Hoping the Cody/Nick for Kimbrel trade will take the sting out of it.
If it helps, I don’t believe Eloy or Cease would’ve fit in at all with the Cubs. Can you imagine Eloy and Contreras or Baez? I can’t.
Prospects are cool but championships are cooler.
Glyber Torres is good, not great. Cubs would still be waiting for a ring if it were not for that trade.
Like I said, I understand the Chapman trade to win it. It was the Quintana trade that bugged me. I agree that Eloy probably wouldn’t have fit in, too much like Soler at the time.
To be fair, Quintana was a very good, young, controllable pitcher when the Cubs traded for him. Having his performance immediately nosedive afterwards was completely unexpected.
The biggest issue they had was that they simply weren’t able to develop much pitching beyond Hendricks in the first place, and relying entirely on trades and free agency to fill out their pitching staffs eventually caught up to them. Then of course COVID-19 happened, and they had to trade Darvish to make up for their revenue losses the previous year.
Had to trade Darvish? More like found a sucker to take that landmine contract.
Enjoy a Cubs criticism article as much as the next guy, but so many such as these keep lamenting the Darvish trade even though it was a great move all along regardless of motivation. Dumping almost 60 mil on an older arm off a fool’s gold shortened season was smart. The core also got stale. When Preciado and/or the young OF turn out to be good on top of the cash dump (already a win), their same fans will get amnesia. Can also spend during ’22 and ’23 what’s not wasted on Yu for its next relevant retool. Madrigal and Heuer were also good gets. Theo scurried from the downward slide he created, yet Hoyer gets the arrows for starting to clean it up in a pragmatic way.
Irregardless of whether it was smart to dump Darvish, they essentially had to do so in order to make up for their revenue losses the previous year and to have enough payroll room just to sign a few small pieces to fill other holes on their roster.
Most teams wound up needing to cut payroll by around $10-20M last offseason due to the pandemic-driven losses (and the MLBPA’s refusal to renegotiate their 2020 salaries), so why do the Cubs get criticized so much more than the others for doing the same thing?
Not sure why is there skepticism for trading away soon to be free agents while only having around $60M commitment for them to spend this offseason. This team will spend money. Whether that accounts for wins we will see.. but nothing to be skeptical about their spending
You are kidding aren’t you? This is the Ricketts who basically haven’t spent since they won the World Series. One and done , they should do the Cubs fans a favor and sell now because they have no desire to do anything but stuff their pockets with cash.
12,5,3,4,6,6,13,19,14,9,6. Those are their spending rankings in the last 11 years. They are an above average spending team and have the resources to do so. Research before you comment.
After they signed Darvish to his megadeal, they had essentially committed most of their available payroll space for the next four seasons (including anticipated arbitration raises) by that point. That’s why they only spent modestly the next 2 offseasons.
It would’ve been a similar story for the 2020-21 offseason, but then the pandemic happened, causing them to actually need to cut payroll significantly, and the only way they could do so (while also having a little payroll room left for other incremental improvements) was to dump a large, existing salary. Nobody was going to take on all of Heyward’s contract., and Darvish was deemed more expendable than anyone else making that kind of money.
Cmon, they stopped spending because they got busted trying to lie about Chicago building codes and it doubled the cost of the construction
Thank Hoyer for trading high on Darvish. He is. On the downside of his career and the Cubs would not have won the division this year with him.
Hoyer said that the organization plans on being “really active in free agency,” though also hedged that by saying they plan to “spend money intelligently.” The real headline here would have been Hoyer saying the Cubs will spend stupidly, something they have proven to do in the recent past.
I also believe that Willson Contreras will be the next of the Cubs “curse-breaking core” to be shipped out this offseason barring a contract extension.
Hoyer: Cubs Plan to Spend Like Drunken Sailor
Would’ve been a better headline.
Spending intelligently isn’t as fun to watch. See Padres’ dumpster fire for example
Hey cub fans tell us again how Arenado can’t hit out of Coors Field and how Goldy will be in decline this year!
Nolan’s wRC+ (that’s park adjusted) is 15 points lower. You’re welcome. Should still be an above average player for the next couple years.
30 home runs and over 100 RBI’s and a gold glove for Arenado. Not too bad huh?
No big-time free agent will be signing with the Cubs. These guys want to win and money will be available elsewhere. The Cubs don’t need an off-season spending spree. What they need is a sensible plan.
I might be the only person who thinks the Cubs will simply re-sign Rizzo, Baez, Bryant and Schwarber this offseason. None of them are in decline, and adding them to that team makes them a conteder.
Completely disagree. They would have 0! Pitching. Hendricks and mills are fine as 4 and 5 but they need to fill the top of their rotation. Don’t forget that 2016 rotation was excellent the bullpen was solid with Chapman and strop.
Well yes they can also acquire pitching as well as those core 4 guys, genius.
C Contreras
1B Rizzo
2B Madrigal
SS Baez
3B Wisdom
LF Bryant
CF Happ
RF Schwindel
Trade Hoerner for pitching
I also disagree about Baez not being in decline, and Schwarber was never that good to begin with.
Yeah good one dingbat, Baez OPS this year is like 30 points above his career average, omg stop talking
Can’t really see any of them wanting to return
It’s actually pretty easy to squint and see a winner. There is a ton of free agents. Eduardo Rodriguez, Carlos Rodon, Jon gray, Steven matz, tony desclafini. All those guys are above average pitchers in their primes who will only command 3 years or less and under 20 mil a year. Sign a couple of those and Baez and hit on some cheap relievers like they did with tepera and chafin.
C- Contreras/ Amaya.
1b- schwindel
2b- madrigal
SS- Baez
3b- Wisdom
Rf – Davis
Cf- Ortega/ hoerner platoon
Lf – happ
hoerner rotates on days he’s not platooning.
Easy to see that as at least an average player at every position which usually equates to a decent team if they can get some pitching, which with the team above only like a 90 mil commitment means they could have 100 mil to spend on pitching. They could take 1 year fliers on Verlander, Thor, and kluber and still get a couple bullpen arms with that kinda coin.
I certainly don’t see 1B or CF as average or better on that list, and LF and 3B are questionable.
I have no idea what you see with this Davis in RF, as J.D. Davis is nowhere near free agency, and Khris Davis now sucks. If he’s a Cubs prospect, then he probably won’t be an average MLB player next year, either.
Brennen Davis. He’s the #14 prospect in MLB. But Baez isn’t coming back. Hoerner is the primary SS for 2022. The speculation about starting pitching is also a fantasy.
Wow! Nothing quite like reading an article about the Cubs plans when it’s obviously written by someone who is biased in their thinking. Good job MLBTR!
Cubs need to plan when the ML promotions begin in the next couple of years. The fact that in 2014-15 they promoted literally their entire core (except Rizzo) really came back to hurt with too many FA at once. No team could afford to re-sign 4-5 All-Star FA in the same offseason.
In long term pieces, Hoerner/Madrigal in same service time group.
Davis gets the call next year & maybe Amaya. In ‘23 it could be a couple more guys like Caisse, Precadio, or Morel.
The point is unless system is changed, they need to avoid all their eggs in one basket.
This is a laughable comment. They built a roster and won the world series.
You can’t just hold down MLB ready prospects like that! They’d get blasted much worse than they did for holding Bryant back for just 2 weeks!
Winning is hard enough. You want the team to only develop a certain amount of prospects so they reach at different times? Good lord.
“Cubs lose, Cubs lose” is something I’m happy to see again. Cubs’ fans have become as insufferable as Red Sox fans without the merit.
Sloppy writing. The writer should have identified himself as Ronald McDonald.
The Cubs are in “rebuild” mode. Don’t expect big spending until 2023 or ‘24.
Hoyer is playing the crowd. Ricketts have zero intention of spending during free agency. Epstein left the minor leagues pretty empty. Not much available at MLB level. I can see Hoyer doing a copy of David Stearns for a few years.
Hoyer is playing to his audience. They need to sell season tickets. What FA will commit to the Cubs at this point? They will have to over pay to get someone to be the first FA to sign that does not want to win immediately. Plus they are more than one or two away from contending.
Totally agree, Ricketts loves payroll where it is & will do nothing to improve the team. He is anxious to return them to Lovable Losers at bargain basement prices.
I thought they might overpay a fan favorite like Javy Baez, who BTW, is having the best post trade season of them all. He could put some fans in the seats.