Jed Hoyer, given a 5-year contract as Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations, says he 'might be more focused toward the future' with core players nearing free agency
With a roster destined for a major retooling, the length of Jed Hoyer’s five-year contract as Chicago Cubs president might prove essential to the task of maintaining the team’s perennial playoff presence.
“In this job you always have one eye on the present and one eye on the future,” Hoyer said Monday in a conference call after the Cubs formally named him president of baseball operations, replacing Theo Epstein. “The truth is that given the service time realities, I might be a little bit more focused toward the future than usual.
“But that doesn’t take away from the goal. The goal is always to make the playoffs and give this organization a chance to go deep into October.”
The likelihood is the Cubs will try to achieve that mission without at least half of the core position players — Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo and Kyle Schwarber — who helped lead them to the 2016 World Series title and five playoff appearances in the last six seasons. All four can become free agents after 2021.
Hoyer, 46, declined to estimate the Cubs’ 2021 payroll. The COVID-19 pandemic — which led to an abbreviated 2020 season, kept fans from attending games and severely reduced revenues — will have an impact on that figure.
His moves might be deliberate this winter, given the added uncertainty about whether the National League again will employ the designated hitter or whether teams will have 28-player active rosters.
Furthermore, the tax credits the Cubs will receive from Wrigley Field earning National Historic Landmark status last week cannot be used toward baseball operations, Chairman Tom Ricketts said.
“It’s very, very fluid,” said Ricketts, adding that he hopes a COVID-19 vaccine might allow fans to return to Wrigley in 2021. “We’ll just take the information as we get it and make the best assessment as we go and try to put as much as we can into winning on the field.”
While acknowledging “there are a lot of great players on this roster,” Hoyer said there are no ongoing negotiations involving contract extensions.
He has more pressing issues to address shortly.
An external search to fill his former role as general manager will start soon. As of Monday morning, the Cubs hadn’t sought permission to talk to Arizona Diamondbacks assistant GMs Jared Porter and Amiel Sawdaye, both of whom have connections to Hoyer via the Boston Red Sox.
Chris Valaika will take over as assistant hitting coach. Valaika, 35, was the minor-league hitting coordinator and played 44 games for the 2014 Cubs as an infielder.
A search to replace third-base Will Venable also will start shortly. And Hoyer plans to announce the promotion of several members of the Cubs front office in a few days.
But Hoyer’s biggest jobs — which could be tied to the fate of the four core players, plus catcher Willson Contreras — are bolstering a pitching staff that has been built heavily on high-priced starters and closers and correcting a talented but flawed offense that has stagnated in the second half of two of the last three seasons.
“We have to do a better job of drafting and developing pitching because counting on major-league transactions to have a good team era is really difficult and really inefficient from a financial and trade capital standpoint,” Hoyer said. “On the hitting side, we’ve drafted and developed great hitters. We’ve actually had surplus hitters, and we’ve been able to trade some of those hitters for pitchers.”
However, the Cubs offense posted a .705 OPS in the second half of the 2018 season, causing them to blow a five-game lead in the final four weeks before losing to the Milwaukee Brewers in a one-game tiebreaker for the NL Central title.
That low OPS mark was duplicated during the 60-game 2020 season. Although the Cubs won the NL Central — their third division title in six seasons — they scored only one run in two games (a home run by Ian Happ) while getting swept by the Miami Marlins in a best-of-three first-round playoff series.
“So that’s been frustrating that we haven’t had the kind of offensive juggernaut that we thought we were developing, to be frank,” Hoyer said. “Most of the time since the end of the season that we’ve spent talking about our team has been talking about what we can do to fix that offense. What are we not doing well enough? How can we change practice habits. How can we change our messaging?”
The lack of homegrown starting pitching caused the Cubs to spend $126 million over six seasons on Yu Darvish and $38.5 million over three years on Tyler Chatwood, in addition to the three-year, $43 million deal for closer Craig Kimbrel. Only Darvish has provided a return on their investment, finishing second in 2020 NL Cy Young Award balloting.
Ricketts emphasized that “I don’t think anyone is tearing anything down.” But the Cubs must be as resourceful as ever, especially in the wake of major cuts in their baseball operations department in August.
“It means we have to work more efficiently,” Hoyer said. “That’s the bottom line. We don’t have the same-sized staff. We have to scout better, research and develop better and more efficiently than we have in the past.”
Hoyer noted that other organizations face similar staffing challenges, but the task of winning and developing simultaneously appears more daunting for the Cubs.
“Reshaping our staff and knowing we have to probably do more work and be more efficient, that’s just part of things,” Hoyer said.
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