Writing off next season while the Wrigleyville Christkindlmarket is still open would be as foolish as anointing the Chicago Cubs as a perennial playoff contender at the exact moment they began their September collapse. Whoops, that take did not age well. Things can happen fast.
Just as those 90th percentile playoff odds cratered at the end of the season, all it would take for the Cubs to flip the perception of this slow offseason would be making a substantial trade and signing a few of the many free agents still out there looking for work. Yu Darvish once made it a point to finalize his deal in time to have a full spring training with his new coaches and teammates in 2018. Waiting until midseason to sign Craig Kimbrel might have cost the Cubs a playoff spot in 2019. Otherwise, it doesn’t really matter if a free agent is onboarded in November, December, January or even February.
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Scott Boras has historically shown he’s willing to wait that long — or even into March — to get the best possible deals for his clients. Signing Cody Bellinger or Matt Chapman would give the Cubs another foundational player with All-Star credentials and Gold Glove hardware. Adding a front-end starter to the rotation became a priority as soon as Marcus Stroman opted out of his contract. Investing more money in the bullpen — while still acquiring buy-low relievers in bulk — will add to Craig Counsell’s great feel for those in-game decisions.
All of those things are still in play. The push-pull dynamics around the Cubs move with the pressure to win in Year 4 of the Jed Hoyer regime, the need to put a good product on the field to support the Ricketts family’s investments in Wrigleyville, and the desire to construct a sustainable team that avoids another boom-and-bust cycle. As long as there is that strong alignment among ownership, the front office and the manager, this long-range plan can work. The Cubs just have to be right.
“We’ve worked really hard to build up our farm system,” Hoyer said at the Winter Meetings. “Our challenge over the next few years is figuring out how to break those players in while also trying to win. That’s a real balance. You can trade all those players away for ‘now’ assets, but you’re going to regret that in the future. Sometimes you’re going to have to be willing to let young players play. Sometimes they’re going to struggle and you have to live through that.
“You have to build those struggles in. You have to realize that if you’re not willing to go through that, you’re going to have a really bloated payroll. You’re not going to have young players. You have to be willing to go through those struggles. Some of the guys aren’t going to become the players we think. We also think some of them will exceed what we think.”
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Compared with their internal options, the Cubs might not see the requisite value and upside in a pitcher such as Jack Flaherty or Lucas Giolito, but they are expected to be involved when Shota Imanaga assesses his options after Yoshinobu Yamamoto picks a team. Christopher Morel isn’t untouchable, but the Cubs will have a hard time rationalizing trading away the prime years of his career for a rental player. The Cubs believed in Ben Brown and Hayden Wesneski when they targeted those pitching prospects at the 2022 trade deadline, but they will have to figure out how to maximize their potential.
The Cubs didn’t express an interest in bringing back Jeimer Candelario, the switch-hitter acquired at this year’s trade deadline who signed a three-year, $45 million contract with the Cincinnati Reds. Candelario’s primary positions — third base and first base — are areas in which the Cubs can look for more impact or shorter-term commitments. The Cubs did pursue Jung Hoo Lee before the Korean outfielder signed a six-year, $113 million contract with the San Francisco Giants. Lee was a unique free agent because of his age (25) and ability to hit left-handed and play center field.
Simply put, the Cubs are always looking for good players on good deals on their terms. Those parameters can also evolve throughout a winter. Seven years and $177 million probably wasn’t the comfort zone heading into last offseason, but the Cubs reacted to the market for All-Star shortstops and Dansby Swanson used his leverage.
Pete Crow-Armstrong celebrates with fans after scoring against the Rockies on Sept. 23. (Matt Marton / USA Today)No one is suggesting the 2024 Opening Day lineup will feature Matt Shaw at third base, Pete Crow-Armstrong in center field and Cade Horton on the mound. By now, it is obvious the Cubs do not operate like the Los Angeles Dodgers. To understand the slower pace and the shifting expectations for this offseason, you have to remember the Cubs want to create lanes for their top prospects, preserve roster flexibility and maximize their financial resources.
There are different ways to go from 83 wins to 90 wins. The Milwaukee Brewers repeatedly outperformed the projections on Counsell’s watch. At this point — Counsell has only been on the job for about six weeks — there is not a lot of daylight between Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, the club’s top baseball executives and the highest-paid manager in baseball.
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“In today’s game, in order to be a constantly competing team, regardless of your payroll, you constantly have to be transitioning new players into the big leagues,” Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins said. “We’re going to have the opportunity to do that over the course of this year and the upcoming years, especially if you think about that wave of players coming up. Who knows which ones are going to be the ones that impact us in the big leagues? But our hope — and our expectation — is there will be several of them.
“That’s one thing we’re really excited about with Craig – his experience in that transition with a lot of young players in Milwaukee and his ability to help us through that. We’ll be a much stronger organization for taking some of those lumps. Not to say that we’re going to do that at the expense of the present, but we’ll give guys a little bit longer leash here as we go through it.”
Again, this isn’t a signal the Cubs are forgoing big deals this winter or planning to run it back next year. Hawkins, who grew up in Georgia, referenced the 1990s Atlanta Braves, which had at least one player appear in the National League Rookie of the Year voting every season between 1990 and 2000. Hawkins also spent 14 seasons working for the Cleveland Guardians, a small-market team that has been repeatedly linked to the Cubs in trade rumors while dealing with an uncertain broadcasting situation. When the Cubs act like a big-market franchise, this isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition.
“You get into trouble on both ends,” Hawkins said. “You get into trouble when you only rely on free agents. And you get into trouble when you rely just on your farm system. We’re in a unique spot where the guys that are coming up through the farm system are knocking on the door, but they’re not necessarily pounding on the door quite yet. That could happen really, really soon. But there is some opportunity for those guys to continue to grow in the minor leagues. That’s the give-and-take that we have here. We want to compete in 2024. We want to have a great team in 2024. But we also don’t want to do that at the expense of the development of players that can be part of our future for a long, long time.”
(Top photo of Craig Counsell and Jed Hoyer: Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today)
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