The Cubs’ 4-2 loss to the Brewers Friday dropped Chicago to a 38-45 record, and a .458 winning percentage that tops only the Marlins and Rockies among all National League teams. With a 17-31 mark in their last 48 games, the Cubs simply haven’t been playing good baseball for the better part of two months, leading to a lot of speculation about the team’s plans heading into the July 30 trade deadline.
President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer addressed this topic and many others when speaking with reporters (including The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma and ESPN’s Jesse Rogers) prior to yesterday’s game, saying “I don’t think it’s time yet for that full conversation” given that the deadline is still a month out. However, Hoyer admitted that “we’ve backed ourselves into a bit of a corner” and things needs to turn around quickly.
“We have to play well this month,” Hoyer said. “I think you have to be a realist when you get to that point….You have to make the best decisions for the organization based on the hand you’re dealt that year. We’ll see what that is.”
It was just last season that the Cubs were 45-51 on July 20 before rattling off an eight-game winning streak that convinced Hoyer to make moves to bolster the roster at the deadline, rather than sell. Jeimer Candelario was acquired in a trade with the Nationals and helped Chicago post a scoring 18-9 record in August 2023, though a late-season fade left the team just short of a playoff berth.
If the Cubs get on track with another big win streak, or if they keep losing at this pace, Hoyer’s deadline decision will be relatively easy. Given the team’s win-now mode and the investments made in the roster, it might also be fair to say that the Cubs will be more prone to adding at the deadline if they’re even near the .500 mark but still within striking distance in the wild card race. (Even now, Chicago is just five games out of the last NL wild card berth.)
Turning to how the Wrigleyville squad might approach selling, their same roster-building endeavors also lead to a lack of obvious trade candidates. As Rogers notes, most of the Cubs’ roster is under longer-term control, either via contracts or players under arbitration control. While Chicago hasn’t played well, the idea of the Cubs blowing things up and having a fire sale of their core simply isn’t realistic, so any deadline selling would surely be made with an eye towards contending in 2025.
Hector Neris and Kyle Hendricks are free agents this winter and Neris’ track record would lead to some interest from bullpen-needy teams, even though he and Hendricks have both struggled for much of the season. Cody Bellinger can become a free agent if he opts out of the last two years and $52.5MM of his current contract, though his decent but unspectacular play creates some doubt as to whether or not an opt-out would lead to Bellinger finally landing a big-ticket multi-year contract. This same gray area in regards to Bellinger’s status as a rental or a possible longer-term piece would impact his possible status as a trade candidate come the deadline.
The Cubs opted to keep Bellinger at last year’s trade deadline, though it could be a different story this year barring another July surge. “Teams like the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers have recently had a noticeable scouting presence around the” Cubs, according to The Athletic’s Will Sammon, Katie Woo, Patrick Mooney, and Ken Rosenthal, and Bellinger has long been linked to the Yankees on the rumor mill. The 37-45 Rangers are in even worse shape than the Cubs, but the defending World Series champs are another team who could pivot to selling if they can start winning in July.
Until the deadline nears, all Hoyer and his front office can do is hope their struggling lineup and bullpen in particular perform better. Hoyer’s disappointment was clear, as he said “when you look at where we’ve performed this year with a team that’s stronger [on paper], it’s lesser. Is that frustrating to me? Absolutely. If it’s frustrating to me, I have to imagine it’s frustrating to the fans.”
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