Cubs, Jed Hoyer Agree To Multi-Year Extension

The Cubs have agreed to a multi-year contract extension with president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer. The team announced the move this afternoon. Cubs executive chairman Tom Ricketts praised his POBO in a press release: “Jed and his baseball operations staff have built a healthy player development organization and put an exciting, playoff-contending team on the field. We are looking forward to the rest of the season and to working with Jed for years to come.”

Hoyer’s previous contract, which he signed when he took over from Theo Epstein as Chicago’s chief baseball decision maker after the 2020 season, would have expired at the end of the 2025 campaign. The Cubs underperformed in each of Hoyer’s first four seasons at the helm, failing to make the playoffs from 2021-24. Another disappointing season this year and he very well could have been out of a job. Yet, many of his offseason moves have worked wonders, with additions such as Kyle Tucker, Matthew Boyd, Carson Kelly, Caleb Thielbar, and Ryan Pressly complementing a strong core that Hoyer put together over the past handful of years.

So, the Cubs enter play on Monday tied with the Brewers for the best record in the National League (62-43). Their +116 run differential is the best in baseball, and FanGraphs puts their odds of making the playoffs at 96.6%. It’s not hard to understand why the Cubs waited to extend Hoyer until it was clear he had built a strong contender, but neither is it hard to understand why they didn’t want to wait any longer to get a deal done. This team is primed to be a major buyer this week, and evidently, they didn’t want to go into such a pivotal trade deadline season with a lame duck executive in the driver’s seat. As ESPN’s Jesse Rogers put it, the Cubs came into the season “looking for a reason” to retain Hoyer. The team’s strong performance over the first four months proved to be that reason.

Hoyer began his front office career with the Red Sox in 2002. He served as an assistant general manager under Epstein from 2005-09 and briefly served as a co-GM when Epstein stepped away during the 2005-06 offseason. Following the 2009 season, Hoyer left Boston to become the Padres’ GM, a role he held for two years before he left to take the GM job in Chicago, where he reunited with Epstein. From 2012-20, Epstein ran the Cubs front office with Hoyer as his second-in-command. Together, they helped the Cubs win a World Series championship in 2016, the club’s first since 1908. When Epstein resigned after the 2020 campaign, Hoyer took his place as president of baseball operations. Since then, he has acquired players like Pete Crow-Armstrong, Michael Busch, Dansby Swanson, Shota Imanaga, Seiya Suzuki, and Daniel Palencia, as well as Tucker, Boyd, Kelly, Thielbar, and Pressly, all of whom have been instrumental to the team’s success this season.

While it’s unclear how long Hoyer’s new extension will keep him in Chicago, he now has at least a couple more years to continue to build upon the core he’s assembled. With the trade deadline fast approaching on Thursday, it’s safe to expect him to start right away.

Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic was the first to report that Hoyer had signed a multi-year extension with the Cubs. Image in article courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski of Imagn Images.