After years of mounting frustrations with their offense, and a predictable midseason crash on the pitching side, the Cubs have finally picked a lane, beginning the process of becoming sellers at the July 30 trade deadline, multiple sources told The Athletic.
The Cubs are at the crossroads they’ve anticipated since at least last winter, when they traded Yu Darvish to the Padres in what was widely seen as a salary-dump deal. A feeling lingers that a big-market franchise with all that young talent could have accomplished even more after winning the 2016 World Series. But an 11-game losing streak at the worst possible time — the Cubs were tied for first place in the National League Central after throwing a no-hitter on June 24 at Dodger Stadium — confirmed the obvious.
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Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer is open for business. The landscape, however, is more complicated than fans might believe. Buyers no longer pay a huge price for rental players. The Cubs’ pro scouting department is depleted. Less information on prospects is available than in the pre-COVID days. And Hoyer has a maze of expiring contracts to sort through, which ones to keep, which ones to move.
To access upper-tier talent, the Cubs might need to pay down contracts, just as they said they were prepared to take on salary as buyers this summer. The deadline might be an opportunity for chairman Tom Ricketts to answer critics who believe he is unwilling to wield the franchise’s financial might.
Anthony Rizzo hears the trade chatter. Javier Báez would be surprised if his personal situation changed at the deadline. Trade rumors — and speculation about his next destination as a free agent — have followed Kris Bryant for so many years that he’s sort of numb to it by now. At this point, it’s out of their control.
“We’ve believed in these guys since 2015,” Hoyer said Thursday before the Cubs’ 8-0 loss to the Phillies at Wrigley Field. “They’ve had a ton of success, and I would never count these guys out. But 11 days ago, we were certainly fully on the buy side of this transaction and everyone was calling about that. Obviously, people are now calling to see which players are available, so it’s a very different scenario than we expected. Life comes at you fast.”
Even before that losing streak reached 11 games, the Cubs had begun shifting their pro scouting coverage, focusing on low-level affiliates of teams likely to add major-league talent this month. A Cubs scout was recently spotted at a Low-A affiliate of the Mets, a team so heavily linked to Bryant last winter that he received a “Welcome to the Mets” text message from an unidentified Connecticut phone number.
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Rizzo understood that uncertainty would hover over his season after he rejected a five-year, $70 million offer from the Cubs, cutting off extension talks before Opening Day. If the COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t shut down spring training in 2020, Báez might have already secured his long-term future. Both sides were in frequent contact at that point and making significant progress toward an extension. By now, Hoyer has a sense for not only Baez’s expectations but Rizzo’s as well.
The Cubs are a flawed team with a substantial amount of individual talent. All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel might be the most valuable player available in all of baseball right now. Two American League executives suggested Hoyer’s best chance for a significant return will likely be packaging a combination of players on expiring contracts in a larger deal that addresses multiple needs for a contending team.
The Cubs made that type of trade on July 4, 2014, when they sent right-handers Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel to the A’s in a deal that brought them shortstop Addison Russell (Samardzija was a year-plus away from free agency, Hammel a pure rental). Such creative structures take time to develop and generally require an extensive back-and-forth between both sides. Right now, every front office is preparing for the three-day amateur draft that begins Sunday night, an event that could slow down typical trade discussions during the All-Star break.
While an early deal or two is possible, the majority of Hoyer’s discussions likely will go right down to the deadline, when the owners of buyers often grow impatient and act with urgency. A highly competitive owner such as the Astros’ Jim Crane or an eager newcomer such as the Mets’ Steve Cohen eventually could push their respective GMs to jump, particularly if they sense division rivals getting stronger. Thus, Hoyer’s leverage only figures to grow as July 30 nears, presuming his trade assets stay healthy.
“When you’re in this moment,” Hoyer said, “and your playoff odds get into single digits at this time of the year, you have to keep one eye on the future and what moves you can potentially make that can help build the next great Cubs team. You have to think through those things. It would be irresponsible not to take those phone calls.”
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While the focus will be on the big names, the Cubs have several useful role players who can also become free agents after this season. Joc Pederson, the left-handed-hitting outfielder, has a World Series ring from the Dodgers and an .852 OPS in 64 career playoff games. Lefty reliever Andrew Chafin hasn’t allowed a run in his last 23 outings. Ryan Tepera (strained left calf) is on track to be activated from the 10-day injured list on Friday and rejoin the bullpen. Zach Davies would represent some depth and dependability in another rotation, given his career 3.85 ERA in 141 big-league starts.
Back when it looked like the Cubs would be adding established talent this summer, president of business operations Crane Kenney appeared on 670 The Score, the team’s flagship radio station, and declared: “Finances won’t be the issue at the deadline.” That June 14 interview represented the season’s high point — 11 games over .500 after a weekend sweep of the Cardinals at a fully reopened Wrigley Field. While the calculus has obviously changed, the Cubs should still use their resources to get the best deals. Covering the remaining money owed to players like Kimbrel and Bryant will expand those possibilities and increase the odds of landing better prospects.
Hoyer is going through his first season as the No. 1 baseball executive inside the Wrigley Field office building. However, he is working within a diminished baseball operations department and without a GM, the role he previously filled for nine seasons with the Cubs. Hoyer and Theo Epstein routinely divided up the work between rival teams and player agents, trying to leverage their relationships and contacts in the baseball industry. Hoyer, for example, did a lot of the legwork before the Cubs acquired Jake Arrieta in the middle of the 2013 season, pushing the Orioles to include Pedro Strop in the lopsided deal for Scott Feldman and Steve Clevenger.
The methodical process of arranging trade proposals and making deals will be more difficult after the Cubs laid off more than 100 employees last year in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the dozens of baseball operations staffers let go — in areas such as player development, international operations and amateur scouting — the cuts also included at least seven evaluators with pro scouting/special assignment responsibilities.
Beyond the optics of potentially trading players he describes as “iconic” Cubs, Hoyer will also be under pressure to acquire prospects who can recharge a farm system that The Athletic’s Keith Law ranked No. 26 out of the 30 big-league organizations heading into this season. While Cubs officials are more bullish about the club’s collection of young talent than the industry consensus, there is also a recognition that most of the high-end prospects are clustered at the lowest levels of the minor leagues.
Three primary prospects acquired in the Darvish trade — infielder Reginald Preciado and outfielders Owen Caissie and Ismael Mena — are teenagers playing in the Arizona Complex League. Ed Howard, the No. 16 pick in the 2020 draft, didn’t get a senior season last year at Chicago’s Mount Carmel High School and is now playing shortstop for Low-A Myrtle Beach.
Injuries are inevitable, and an industry-wide concern for players who did not get to experience a minor-league season in 2020. The Cubs are also very cautious with their rehab programs for injured players. But a rash of injuries has sidelined some of the organization’s most intriguing prospects, including catcher Miguel Amaya and pitchers Brailyn Márquez, Kohl Franklin and Riley Thompson, wiping out even more developmental time. The organization’s four minor-league affiliates — from Triple A to Low A — had a combined 92-125 record entering Thursday.
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But the Cubs can’t wait around for prospects, not when they have a new TV network and so many investments in the Wrigleyville neighborhood. An NL executive predicted the Cubs will hold onto players under long-term contractual control, a position that would rule out an extreme idea like trading pitcher Kyle Hendricks. The NL official was pessimistic about the chances of the Cubs trading Willson Contreras, because it is difficult to line up a deal for an All-Star catcher, Contreras has been available in previous trading cycles, and he is positioned to become a free agent after the 2022 season.
Cubs manager David Ross called Contreras “irreplaceable” earlier this season. Contreras leads the majors in innings caught, and the reality is it’s rare to see a starting catcher moved at the deadline. Teams are often looking for veteran backups, but every team has its own unique pitching infrastructure and the catchers have an outsize role in it all. It’s a difficult midseason challenge for a World Series contender to integrate a new primary catcher into their system. Contreras did it as a rookie in 2016, earning respect from veteran pitchers, but he was a homegrown player who had spent time around them in spring training.
Whatever happens in the next three weeks, the Cubs aren’t planning to lose 100 games next season and hoping to land the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft. Too many other teams copied that tanking blueprint, rendering it not as effective. The Cubs also won’t be going all-in to try to win the 2022 World Series. But Rizzo, Báez and Bryant have all expressed a desire to stay in Chicago and there is built-in flexibility with all those expiring contracts. The Cubs play in a weak division and in a ballpark that is supposed to draw 3 million fans per year. Hoyer won’t call it a rebuild, even though it might look that way very soon.
“We’re in a different situation now than we were in 2012,” Hoyer said. “The decisions we’re making, the processes we’re going through are completely different. That label is certainly something to be avoided. I think that people talk ‘rebuilds’ when you’re doing what we did in 2012. We are going to have roster turnover. We need to do that. That was inevitable.
“This is certainly not a rebuild by any kind of definition that we’re using from our past.”
(Photo of Craig Kimbrel, Anthony Rizzo and catcher Willson Contreras: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)