Did Jed Hoyer Earn His Extension According To His Own Criteria?

[RandallPnkFloyd]

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

When the Chicago Cubs announced a multi-year extension for president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer on Monday, my initial reaction was... "sure." That was followed by "okay," which was succeeded by "fine." In short, it was a fairly muted reaction. Judging by the lack of acute polarization across social media from a fan base that always finds ways to deeply meet each end of the emotional spectrum upon any move from the franchise, it sort of speaks to the magnitude of the move. Or, perhaps, the lack thereof. 

It's a move that ultimately signals that Tom Ricketts and the ownership group are satisfied with the work Hoyer has turned in since 2020, with the team doing enough thus far in 2025 to merit a longer runway with which to continue to work. Lacking the candor of his predecessor, Theo Epstein, Hoyer's word salad-y defense of apparently constant payroll constraints was enough to compensate for the absence of a postseason appearance since his promotion. 

Not that there haven't been victories for Hoyer within the organization. It was the Hoyer-led front office that acquired Pete Crow-Armstrong while he was plying his trade in A ball. They signed Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga. They acquired a post-hype Michael Busch and a present-hype Kyle Tucker (sans extension at present, of course). To say it's been a mixed bag, though, would be appropriately euphemistic. It's been entirely imperfect and entirely underwhelming, given the aforementioned lack of playoff success. 

We don't need to rehash that here, however; Matt Trueblood already covered the basics in his initial writeup of the news. As a chief of baseball ops, your game is winning. Hoyer hasn't done enough, so we can state with a certain level of objectivity that he has not succeeded in the role. What is worth exploring, though, is whether Hoyer has, in fact, found success by his own standards, and in his own words.

Let's start with a softball from his initial press conference:

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"We have none ongoing right now...But certainly, we have players on this roster that we'd love to have here for a long time. So, at some point in the future, I think we'll probably pick those up. But right now, there's nothing ongoing." (MLB.com)

That particular quote was in reference to the 2020 group. That team still featured many of the important names from the championship squad of 2016. We know how things unfolded the following season. By the end of that winter, Kyle Schwarber was non-tendered. Each of Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, and Javier Báez was traded during the 2021 campaign. Of those from the organization's last (technical) postseason appearance, only Ian Happ and Nico Hoerner remain. Each player signed a three-year extension in 2023. 

It's unclear whether those were the players to whom Hoyer was referring. My assumption, however, is that he was talking more about extending the very guys he ended trading instead. Failing to extend (and instead trading away) multiple franchise icons didn't get his tenure off to the greatest of starts. Schwarber has gone on to thrive in subsequent stops, and while none of the other three remotely reached the same heights they did on the North Side, those initial comments still stand as an indicator of some failure from the jump.

Here's another, more striking quote, from that same press conference: 

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"In this job, you always have one eye on the present and one eye on the future...I think that eye might be a little bit more focused towards 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 in October." (MLB.com)

This is the big one, because this has been the driver of seemingly every decision Hoyer has made atop the Cubs' front office. Budget constraints notwithstanding, Hoyer has constantly erred on the side of playing things conservatively. Maintaining an eye on the present and the future simultaneously is a difficult needle to thread, but it's never felt like the present was as much of a priority as the future. 

Under Hoyer, the Cubs have regularly chosen to avoid the big move or the notable free-agent signing. Before Kyle Tucker, there was an apprehension in making the big trade that many of their big-market counterparts are more willing to execute. Opportunities were there, though. It was that the Cubs were content to let those opportunities pass, in the name of not even risking mortgaging the future. And such failure isn't isolated to the "big" moves. There has been a consistent struggle to build on the margins that has left the Cubs in a sort of purgatory for much of the last five years.

What Hoyer has done, however, is keep that other eye on the future. Under his supervision, the team has seen improvements in the draft (Matt Shaw, Cade Horton) and in the pitching infrastructure. It's not that Hoyer alone is responsible for this, but his leadership has certainly been a factor in some of the more foundational components of organizational operations. The proverbial needle hasn't quite been threaded, but success in one arena is better than success in zero arenas, I suppose.

And lastly, here are a few bits from his comments last winter:

(Prior to the Kyle Tucker trade)

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“I do think with our team, we have a very balanced, solid team...It’s trying to figure out ways that we can improve. If we’re going to improve on our position-player group in particular, it has to be a notable increase. We’re not just going to move marginally.” (MLB.com)

(Still pre-Kyle Tucker trade)

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“The goal is obviously to keep pushing and to get better. We’ll see where that goes. Deals have to come together. We have to try to do some hard deals, but ultimately, I think we have a really great foundation right now. It’s just a question of, ‘Can we build around that and make it better?’” (MLB.com)

(Post Kyle Tucker trade)

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“My own situation, that’s not a concern, For me, I don’t look at it that way. I’ve been in the game a long time. I’m confident in my abilities and my resume. My job, always, is to be the best steward of the organization. I try to make good decisions for the Ricketts family. I try to make sure I’m setting us up for a good future but also try to set us up for an exciting present. I don’t think this deal is in any conflict with that.” (The Athletic)

On one hand, there's a lot of earnest success here. Hoyer said, straight up, that the team wasn't interested in marginal improvements. He very much proved that in acquiring an elite hitter in Tucker, who has come as advertised for almost all of 2025. At the same time, it's also an imperfect measure. If we wanted to get cynical, we could point out that he essentially ignored the margins in filling out the rest of the roster on the positional side. Handing the third base job to Shaw and bringing in the likes of Justin Turner and Vidal Bruján for bench jobs doesn't jibe with a Tucker acquisition in matters of actually building out a contending roster. I'd never call something like trading for Kyle Tucker a half-measure. It's obviously not. I'm just pointing out the words as Hoyer said them. 

The Tucker deal fit the criteria of a "hard" deal that Hoyer described in the middle quote. Parting with Cam Smith after he thrived almost immediately upon his selection in the 2024 MLB Draft couldn't have been easy. It was, however, necessary, and a sharp deviation from the type of conservative activity we'd seen from Hoyer in the years prior. If we're taking his words at face value, though, he did accomplish what he set out to do: set the Cubs up for an exciting future and exciting present (and here it's probably worth noting that signing Kyle Tucker long-term would go a long way toward solidifying those comments). 

The outset of Jed Hoyer's tenure likely wouldn't be deemed a success by his own criteria. He jettisoned multiple franchise icons despite an interest in retaining "some" of them (and we have to assume he was referring to some of that core group rather than a Happ or a Hoerner). As it progressed, though, we might be able to make a case for it. He's helped position the organization into solid standing for the medium-term future. The system remains in good shape, and the infrastructure is more robust than it was, particularly on the pitching side.

But he hasn't threaded that needle. We've heard about the needle more frequently than any other talking point from the Cubs' president. Compounding present winning with future winning. By that criteria alone, it's hard to outright justify Hoyer's new deal, from his perspective or our own.

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