Cubs<\/a> president Jed Hoyer has to navigate those waters as he looks to start checking items off his winter to-do list.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019ll make the best decisions with the information we have at the time,\u201d he said last month. \u201cSome of those may come before Dec. 1, and some may come after. But I don\u2019t think anyone, at this point, has a firm grasp on that. If they say they do, they\u2019re probably incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last time baseball endured a work stoppage, between the 2021 and 2022 seasons, there was a lot of free-agent activity in November, with some pretty big contracts handed out leading up to the clock striking midnight and everything being put on hold.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s GM meetings could signal whether teams will operate similarly this time around, seeking security in what their rosters will look like, regardless of how negotiations over a collective-bargaining agreement play out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there are contracts that will make sense no matter the setup, then you make those deals,\u2019\u2019 Hoyer said. \u2018\u2018There are certainly going to be contracts that make sense regardless of the structure. Knowing what is going to be after, you\u2019re making a lot of assumptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut certainly there are deals, contracts, players that you would retain regardless of what that structure was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether they get it all done before the buzzer sounds or after the lockout, whenever that might be, Hoyer & Co. have a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n
Chiefly, there\u2019s remaking the Cubs\u2019 pitching staff, the undoubted priority for the front office in the wake of a disappointing playoff exit. All five of the pitchers who finished the season in the rotation are free agents, and Hoyer was blunt in his assessment that his work to construct a bullpen last winter didn\u2019t work, forecasting a makeover there, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s safe to say that the biggest part of our focus going into the offseason is going to be on pitching,\u201d Hoyer said. \u201cWhether that\u2019s 100-to-0, what that ratio is going to be, has not been determined yet. But certainly, the great majority of our focus is going to be on pitching acquisition going in.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are potential needs on the far more stable position-player side, too, with corner outfielders Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki \u2014 the latter got a qualifying offer from the Cubs last week \u2014 potentially departing as free agents.<\/p>\n
Over the last calendar year, Hoyer has not been shy about making win-now trades, shipping top prospects away in exchange for Edward Cabrera, Kevin Gausman and Clay Holmes. The latter two were acquired as trade-deadline rentals but didn\u2019t help the Cubs even make it to October; the team was swept out of the wild-card round.<\/p>\n
But those were the kinds of bets Hoyer\u2019s front office needed to make to push a team built to win toward championship contention.<\/p>\n
As expectations remain at the championship level, the question will be how much is left in the farm system to make similar deals?<\/p>\n
Should there not be enough to lure away top talent from other clubs, perhaps the coffers will have to open once again, the way they did to land Alex Bregman last offseason.<\/p>\n
Bregman proved worth every penny of his $175 million free-agent contract, awakening from a deep slump in dramatic enough fashion to finish as the Cubs\u2019 second-best hitter and playing Gold Glove defense at third base.<\/p>\n
Those are the things Hoyer has done, and while he made the moves necessary to set the Cubs up for success, they didn\u2019t equal success in the end. So it\u2019s back to the drawing board to make the improvements that will not just get the Cubs another crack at the postseason but position them to challenge for division, league and MLB championships, an even taller task now that the division rival Brewers are kings of the baseball world.<\/p>\n
The quest for pitching likely already has begun for Hoyer & Co., and perhaps the hot stove gets flipped on a little early with the lockout on the way.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll find out this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Baseball\u2019s GM meetings are rarely the site of big-money free-agent deals and blockbuster trades. But might this year\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,4245,161,4],"class_list":["post-849018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-cubs","tag-baseball","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-chicagocubs","tag-cubs","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117583840768685795","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}