The Cubs\u2019 season came to an unceremonious end on Wednesday. Chicago was easily swept out of the Wild Card Series by San Diego. They lost by a combined 12-1 margin over the two contests.<\/p>\n
President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer met with reporters (including ESPN\u2019s Jesse Rogers<\/a> and Vinnie Duber of The Chicago Sun-Times<\/a>) as the team enters offseason mode. It\u2019s no surprise that upgrading the pitching staff is the priority.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re leaning on our defense too heavily, and the overall quality of the pitching has to improve. \u2026 When I think about our offseason, when I think about seasons to come, that has to be the goal, to get our pitching infrastructure and pitching quality to the level of our position player group,\u201d Hoyer said. \u201cIt\u2019s safe to say that the biggest part of our focus going into the offseason is going to be on pitching. Whether 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.\u201d<\/p>\n This year\u2019s Cubs were one of the more lopsided teams in history. As Mike Petriello of MLB.com<\/a> explored in the middle of September, the Cubs arguably had the best offense and team defense in MLB while running out one of the worst pitching staffs. Chicago ended up middle of the pack in overall run prevention despite having Gold Glove caliber defenders around much of the diamond. Their pitchers were 23rd in strikeout rate and allowed the most home runs in the National League. Only the A\u2019s surrendered more longballs than Chicago\u2019s 231.<\/p>\n The Cubs tried to address the pitching midsummer. They traded for\u00a0David Peterson<\/a> in late June and added\u00a0Clay Holmes<\/a>,\u00a0Kevin Gausman<\/a> and reliever\u00a0Ryan Zeferjahn<\/a> at the deadline. The starters are all impending free agents, assuming Holmes declines his $12MM player option.\u00a0Shota Imanaga<\/a> and Matthew Boyd<\/a> (mutual option) will also head back to the market.<\/p>\n Justin Steele<\/a> will hopefully have a typical offseason but hasn\u2019t pitched in an MLB game since April 2025 because of elbow surgery.\u00a0Ben Brown<\/a> is coming off a season-ending neck injury.\u00a0Cade Horton<\/a> underwent Tommy John surgery in April and is looking at a second half return in the best scenario.<\/p>\n The Cubs figure to be linked to almost every free agent starter of note and should be involved on the top potential trade targets (e.g. Reid Detmers<\/a>,\u00a0MacKenzie Gore<\/a>,\u00a0Drew Rasmussen<\/a>). There\u2019ll surely be calls from some of the fanbase for\u00a0Tarik Skubal<\/a>, yet that\u2019d probably require more than doubling the largest contract in team history: the eight-year, $184MM deal they gave\u00a0Jason Heyward<\/a> a decade ago.<\/p>\n They\u2019ll have a significant amount of turnover in the bullpen as well.\u00a0Aaron Civale<\/a>,\u00a0Caleb Thielbar<\/a>, Trent Thornton<\/a> and\u00a0Hunter Harvey<\/a> are free agents. They\u2019ll have borderline club option calls on Colin Rea<\/a> and\u00a0Jacob Webb<\/a>, the latter of whom melted down at the end of the season. Chicago didn\u2019t get much from their two-year deal with\u00a0Phil Maton<\/a>. Zeferjahn was inconsistent after the trade, while season-opening closer\u00a0Daniel Palencia<\/a> struggled to miss bats around an elbow injury.<\/p>\n The Cubs have generally shied away from huge bullpen investments under Hoyer. Their current leverage group is one of the weakest in the league, however, even with Maton and\u00a0Shelby Miller<\/a> hopefully back from injury. Even if a run at\u00a0Adrian Morejon<\/a> or\u00a0David Bednar<\/a> would be out of character for this front office, there\u2019s an argument for going in that direction. They reportedly were runners-up with a four-year offer<\/a> to Tanner Scott<\/a> two off-seasons ago, so it\u2019s not as if they\u2019re firmly opposed to spending on the right reliever.<\/p>\n While the focus is going to be on the pitching staff, the Cubs have a few key position players also hitting the market.\u00a0Seiya Suzuki<\/a> is a near-lock to reject a qualifying offer and could price himself out of Chicago on a four-year deal with a club that\u2019s more aggressively hunting offense.\u00a0Ian Happ<\/a> is a less likely QO candidate after a middling final four months. If the Cubs let both players walk, they\u2019ll need at least one outfielder from outside the organization.<\/p>\n Carson Kelly<\/a> should land another multi-year deal, though the Cubs might be content to break in rookie\u00a0Owen Ayers<\/a> alongside\u00a0Miguel Amaya<\/a>. Fourth outfielder\u00a0Tyrone Taylor<\/a> and bench bat Michael Conforto<\/a> also played solid roles and are slated to hit the market. There\u2019s naturally going to be a lot of turnover with this many players in the final seasons of their deals.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going to be able to bring back all of them. That\u2019s clear,\u201d Hoyer said of the team\u2019s free agent class. \u201cWe can\u2019t retain everyone. The team\u2019s going to look and feel different next year. \u2026 We do have a lot of good players that are going to be free agents and we\u2019ll be in touch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cubs\u2019 season came to an unceremonious end on Wednesday. Chicago was easily swept out of the Wild…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":919110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,78057,43294,14562,1510,462,1508,9104,82],"class_list":["post-919109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-clay-holmes","tag-ian-happ","tag-kevin-gausman","tag-matthew-boyd","tag-mlb","tag-seiya-suzuki","tag-shota-imanaga","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/919110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}