Cubs 2025 Season Review/Offseason Preview Thread

[Neuby]

7 minutes ago, KCCub said:

Been away for a while, was it announced that the Rumors and Transactions forum was going away? I noticed it was missing and I couldn’t find a notification anywhere. 

RIP transactions thread 

[Outshined_One]

3 hours ago, KCCub said:

Been away for a while, was it announced that the Rumors and Transactions forum was going away? I noticed it was missing and I couldn’t find a notification anywhere. 

We'd noticed that there had been duplicate threads in transactions and the main forum, particularly at the deadline, and the decision was made to merge the two to make life easier for everyone so you wouldn't have to jump back and forth between threads or figure out where a new topic belonged.

As far as I can tell, you're the first person to notice this!

[Post Count Padder]

53 minutes ago, Outshined_One said:

We'd noticed that there had been duplicate threads in transactions and the main forum, particularly at the deadline, and the decision was made to merge the two to make life easier for everyone so you wouldn't have to jump back and forth between threads or figure out where a new topic belonged.

As far as I can tell, you're the first person to notice this!

The Transactions forum was still showing up for me until like 2 days ago.

[KCCub]

56 minutes ago, Outshined_One said:

We'd noticed that there had been duplicate threads in transactions and the main forum, particularly at the deadline, and the decision was made to merge the two to make life easier for everyone so you wouldn't have to jump back and forth between threads or figure out where a new topic belonged.

As far as I can tell, you're the first person to notice this!

I think it was the correct move. Maybe worth putting out a note about the merger? I’m sure others have been searching for it as well. 

[Jason Ross]

 

[Bertz]

 

*chanting*

PONCE, PONCE, PONCE!

[Rcal10]

2 minutes ago, Bertz said:

 

*chanting*

PONCE, PONCE, PONCE!

Maybe🤷 Honestly I don’t know a thing about him. But you did mention him before. 

[Jason Ross]

12 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

Maybe🤷 Honestly I don’t know a thing about him. But you did mention him before. 

Sub 2.00 ERA in Korea last year. Struck out 36% of hitters faced. Fastball sits mid 90s and can tick up. Heard the control comes and goes gets a little too challenge heavy. His numbers in KBO were the in Merrill Kelly territory and he turned into a good SP after a KBO stint. 

I think a good org gets him to a mid rotation arm. But there is BP risk. And nothing is for sure. 

[Irrelevant Dude]

35 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

 

While that may be true, I wouldn't necessarily say they are in a good position on the hitting side after losing their top offensive player (or at least the guy with the pedigree to be their top offensive player) from a lineup that was already prone to extremely inconsistent results.  There is no reason the Cubs can't address BOTH the offense and pitching staff, but Hoyer is already setting the stage for an underwhelming offseason approach.

[Rcal10]

4 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

While that may be true, I wouldn't necessarily say they are in a good position on the hitting side after losing their top offensive player (or at least the guy with the pedigree to be their top offensive player) from a lineup that was already prone to extremely inconsistent results.  There is no reason the Cubs can't address BOTH the offense and pitching staff, but Hoyer is already setting the stage for an underwhelming offseason approach.

I guess it depends on perception of what a good off season would be. If they signed Laureano and a few solid pen arms (Keller and Soto) and traded for Ryan is that an underwhelming off season? How about if they signed the Japanese pitcher coming over, instead of trading for Ryan? They have the money for any of those moves. 

[squally1313]

2 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

 

This is concerning, if you'll allow me to keep leaning into this apparently newly acquired doom boner. 

[Jason Ross]

9 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

This is concerning, if you'll allow me to keep leaning into this apparently newly acquired doom boner. 

You doom boner it up. 

I don't take it as bad. Like I said to you, I'm not super in love with this class of bats. I think if the Cubs are thinking in terms of just Uber loading up on pitching, this is perfectly fine if they also don't love these hitters. 

Obviously that calls on you to believe their comments. They did say they'd look at all levels of the FA market and trade market for arms. They talked about the pitching at the end of year presser. So I do believe that they're definitely interested in pitching. Will they get a little irrational and get Cease or Imai? Or will they instead do a Ponce, King off-season and call her quits? 

[squally1313]

Just now, Jason Ross said:

You doom boner it up. 

I don't take it as bad. Like I said to you, I'm not super in love with this class of bats. I think if the Cubs are thinking in terms of just Uber loading up on pitching, this is perfectly fine if they also don't love these hitters. 

Obviously that calls on you to believe their comments. They did say they'd look at all levels of the FA market and trade market for arms. They talked about the pitching at the end of year presser. So I do believe that they're definitely interested in pitching. Will they get a little irrational and get Cease or Imai? Or will they instead do a Ponce, King off-season and call her quits? 

It's just like...it's the beginning of the winter meetings and they have $80m to spend. Maybe....don't feel compelled to mention minor league free agents? I hate the arguments that use like, a four season run to then predict how Hoyer is going to act. But the types of bats that he's gone and picked up (Swanson, Suzuki, Paredes, Tucker) makes me a lot more confident in actually spending all this cash then his pitching approach (Imanaga, Taillon, Boyd, Rea). He has a built in advantage with Hottovy and the pitching infrastructure, and he obviously should use it, but that's even more money to go overpay Pete Alonso to hit 130 home runs for you the next three years.

Saying 'we're set' on the offense after losing your best hitter and then being like 'well there's the good pitchers, and then there's the weird project pitchers you can get for $5, and it's important I mention those' is maybe, possibly Jed Hoyer Speak for Japanese league pitchers and 'hm, you know, if you look under the hood, this guys got a profile that could really play up in the pitching lab' and a $175m payroll. 

[Bertz]

Initial FG Projections have the Cubs position players at 26.7 WAR.  That is currently 5th in the league, and if you look back historically the last three years would rank 9th, 7th, and 6th respectively.

The Cubs currently projected 11.1 pitching WAR is would rank 24th, 25th, and 24th the last three years.

I don't know why we're getting concerned about calling a spade a spade.

Edited November 12, 2025 by Bertz
Clarity

[Jason Ross]

8 hours ago, squally1313 said:

It's just like...it's the beginning of the winter meetings and they have $80m to spend. Maybe....don't feel compelled to mention minor league free agents? I hate the arguments that use like, a four season run to then predict how Hoyer is going to act. But the types of bats that he's gone and picked up (Swanson, Suzuki, Paredes, Tucker) makes me a lot more confident in actually spending all this cash then his pitching approach (Imanaga, Taillon, Boyd, Rea). He has a built in advantage with Hottovy and the pitching infrastructure, and he obviously should use it, but that's even more money to go overpay Pete Alonso to hit 130 home runs for you the next three years.

Saying 'we're set' on the offense after losing your best hitter and then being like 'well there's the good pitchers, and then there's the weird project pitchers you can get for $5, and it's important I mention those' is maybe, possibly Jed Hoyer Speak for Japanese league pitchers and 'hm, you know, if you look under the hood, this guys got a profile that could really play up in the pitching lab' and a $175m payroll. 

So, I'll push back on few things:

1. I don't know we lost our best hitter. Michael Busch finished the season with a 140 wRC+. Kyle Tucker finished the year with a 136 wRC+(career 138 wRC+). It's certainly possible we saw the best season Michael Busch can or will ever have - but he made a lot of progress with the swing and even against LHP. And while we have seen Kyle Tucker go bananas for stints, we haven't seen him really be consistently better than 140 wRC+, either.

I'm not saying Busch is our best hitter, but like, it isn't as if the Cubs were a one man show.  This isn't me saying "it's okay to let him go" or "Kyle Tucker won't be missed" but that I think we forget how good Busch (140 wRC+) was. 

2. The Cubs, even without Kyle Tucker, project to be average or better than average at every position on the diamond right now except for DH.  They also are very much a team with a glut of offensive prospects - they shouldn't keep them all and hoard them, but we should feel fairly confident in their ability to pick one of them and turn them into a good MLB regular. They've consistently done this the last few years, they get a benefit of the doubt here. 

So while you've brought up Hottovy and the Cubs pitching infrastructure, it's also fair to remember all of the progress we have made developing young hitters. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Matt Shaw, Miguel Amaya and Michael Busch have seen big strides with their swings over just the last two years. If the Cubs choose to go with with a rookie there is also a reason to believe that they can get the most out of them, much like Hottovy could get the most out of an under the radar arm. 

3. I'm not going to defend the Cubs if they walk into the season with a $175m payroll adding a down-year Michael King, building a cheap ass BP and ignoring the offense. But I think the payroll concerns don't match with how the Cubs have behaved. They're cheap in that they clearly care most about profits, don't spend to their ability and don't want to break the bank on great players but they've never been "win 92 games and then drop to the 17th (in 2025) best payroll" cheap, either (unless we count 2020 into 2021 but I think the Pandemic was the root cause and there has was no recent pandemic). I wouldn't expect them to blow past an LT, but I do expect they'll get to around the same payroll. 

I also don't expect they'll ignore the offense entirely. But I do think what we're hearing over and over is that the Cubs priority is pitching, and as @Bertz showed, it's their obvious issue. 

[squally1313]

3 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

I'm not saying Busch is our best hitter, but like, it isn't as if the Cubs were a one man show.  This isn't me saying "it's okay to let him go" or "Kyle Tucker won't be missed" but that I think we forget how good Busch (140 wRC+) was. 

Fair. Regardless, losing a .363 wOBA/.382 xwOBA hitter is going to hurt.

3 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

Pete Crow-Armstrong, Matt Shaw, Miguel Amaya and Michael Busch have seen big strides with their swings over just the last two years.

To paint with an overly broad brush, three of these hitters have career wRCs below 100. Strides have been made, yes, progress isn't linear, yes, but it's not like PCA and Shaw ended the season on a positive note, and the advanced metrics didn't love Amaya's 103 PAs this year. That doesn't make them bad players, but I worry we're making too much of the airplane out of .730 OPS guys with good gloves. 

3 hours ago, Jason Ross said:

3. I'm not going to defend the Cubs if they walk into the season with a $175m payroll adding a down-year Michael King, building a cheap ass BP and ignoring the offense. But I think the payroll concerns don't match with how the Cubs have behaved. They're cheap in that they clearly care most about profits, don't spend to their ability and don't want to break the bank on great players but they've never been "win 92 games and then drop to the 17th (in 2025) best payroll" cheap, either (unless we count 2020 into 2021 but I think the Pandemic was the root cause and there has was no recent pandemic). I wouldn't expect them to blow past an LT, but I do expect they'll get to around the same payroll. 

I think, to make this sound more optimistic, the Cubs have had some success bargain hunting for pitchers, but their attempts to find bargain rate hitters has been largely a disaster. The offense is above average but will not project to be elite if we don't do anything meaningful to improve it. Jed deciding to spend the majority of his energy/resources on pitching, to me, makes it more likely that we end up pocketing a bunch of money, because why get a Corbin Burnes (Dylan Cease) or a Jack Flaherty when you could get a Matt Boyd (Michael King)? And he might not be wrong on that thought process, he's proven he can find value that way to some extent, and that's his whole thing. But then we're left with a pitching staff that outpitches their salary and a young, top 10ish offense, a pile of unused cash, and the same 88ish wins projection. 

[Jason Ross]

3 minutes ago, squally1313 said:

Fair. Regardless, losing a .363 wOBA/.382 xwOBA hitter is going to hurt.

To paint with an overly broad brush, three of these hitters have career wRCs below 100. Strides have been made, yes, progress isn't linear, yes, but it's not like PCA and Shaw ended the season on a positive note, and the advanced metrics didn't love Amaya's 103 PAs this year. That doesn't make them bad players, but I worry we're making too much of the airplane out of .730 OPS guys with good gloves. 

I think, to make this sound more optimistic, the Cubs have had some success bargain hunting for pitchers, but their attempts to find bargain rate hitters has been largely a disaster. The offense is above average but will not project to be elite if we don't do anything meaningful to improve it. Jed deciding to spend the majority of his energy/resources on pitching, to me, makes it more likely that we end up pocketing a bunch of money, because why get a Corbin Burnes (Dylan Cease) or a Jack Flaherty when you could get a Matt Boyd (Michael King)? And he might not be wrong on that thought process, he's proven he can find value that way to some extent, and that's his whole thing. But then we're left with a pitching staff that outpitches their salary and a young, top 10ish offense, a pile of unused cash, and the same 88ish wins projection. 

To be fair to the Cubs here as well, though, if we're going to say "Hottovy works magic" than we have to remember this; advanced metrics don't like the Cubs pitching as much either. They were top-10 in ERA and 18th in xFIP on the whole. Part of that is because of their defense, but I think it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy; if we believe the Cubs are good at getting more out of players (young players like Amaya or mediocre pitchers like Colin Rea) than they probably will out perform their advanced metrics. 

I don't want to beat a dead horse here or make it a longer discussion than needs to be - only saying that I don't mind that the Cubs have identified pitching as their primary need. In a perfect world, I would trust the Cubs to spend money on Kyle Schwarber on a five year deal and if/when it got ugly, would just move on from it and use their financial advantage, but sadly, I just don't. The Cubs will probably always need to be more careful than they should need to be in how they spend. And because of that, I'd rather them just go in on the players I feel most comfortable with when it comes to meeting their contractual value. 

[KCCub]

Linking for the quote from Bruce. Did anyone catch where Bruce said this?

 

[squally1313]

10 minutes ago, Jason Ross said:

They were top-10 in ERA and 18th in xFIP on the whole. Part of that is because of their defense, but I think it's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy; if we believe the Cubs are good at getting more out of players (young players like Amaya or mediocre pitchers like Colin Rea) than they probably will out perform their advanced metrics. 

I mean, this is a pretty impressive performance when you consider what the pitching staff was made up of during the year. Shota and Taillon were free agents at market rates but far from considered elite pitchers, the rest was a guy with 40 innings last year, internal development, and relievers in their late 30s. 

I agree with you that of the big names, the pitchers are more likely to hold/meet their value. But I also think Hoyer and Hottovy have proven that they can get outsize value from their (generally mid tier) pitching targets, so between that and freeing up trade capital on the offensive side to expand their pitching options trade wise, I'm more ok with overpaying for a big bat, because I think this offense is short one. 

[morrisjon]

I definitely agree that Hoyer knows how to put together a bullpen on a budget. However there is a major drawback that I think gets overlooked and it's the fact that it usually takes a month or so to really get the bullpen set. You basically end up with a few guys producing significant negative WAR in April/May while things are getting ironed out. You are always going to have bullpen arms battling out for spots, having to deal with injuries but it's a nice luxury to have only a limited number of spots up grabs instead of piecemealing the entire thing.  

On the offensive side, we have Cassie, Ballesteros, and Alcantara that need to either play or be dealt. Maybe you move one before the season starts? I think the young players give you some flexibility on the offensive side to wait until the trade deadline to address any needs instead of being forced to do it in Free Agency. 

I would like to see a big upgrade with the bench, especially in the "Justin Turner" role. On the pitching side, we should have plenty of money/assets to acquire 2 TOR type pitchers and a couple of established arms that aren't a Hoyer "project".

But like every year recently, it seems to come down to how much the Ricketts family is willing to actually open up the wallet.  

[KCCub]

This is what makes baseball so fun (Or frustrating when you're a large market but don't spend like the other large markets).

1. Do you address what most consider the biggest need and sign one of the top SP (Valdez, Cease, Suarez). Use the rest of the available capital for upgrades to the pen, bench, and marginal corner OF bat. Easier to grab a platoon bat at the deadline vs premium SP like we ran into last TDL.

2. Do you address the hole that Tucker is going to leave and instead invest in a bat (Schwarber, Alonso, Bregman). And then budget shop again in the mid tier SP market and also address pen/bench.  

3. Do you swing a large trade for a Cabrera, Ryan, Gore and then add the big bat via FA. The downside of this is it completely diminishes the farm. Also, according to the rumblings from the TDL, you might not be able to swing this trade with out a Shaw or Horton (Absolutely no on Horton from me). But it does put the best team on the field for 2026.

(Option 4 is the dream scenario of Ricketts spending like the big market we are, sign Valdez, sign Tucker, keep the farm mainly intact, and use assets to plug the rest of the holes) 

[Neuby]

4 hours ago, KCCub said:

Linking for the quote from Bruce. Did anyone catch where Bruce said this?

 

The Angels are dumb. If the asking price for Adell who turns 27 in April is headlined by Brown or Wicks im picking up the phone. $5.5M controllable through 2027. GG caliber RFwith plus speed and 40 home run pop.

[Bertz]

4 hours ago, KCCub said:

Linking for the quote from Bruce. Did anyone catch where Bruce said this?

 

I like this, I mentioned Adell last week

https://northsidebaseball.com/forums/topic/56044-cubs-2025-season-reviewoffseason-preview-thread/page/20/#findComment-4003548

 

I think the ideal RHH bat for this team is a 1B/3B, but Adell's bat is fun as hell and he's athletic enough that a competent team might be able to turn him into an adequate CFer.

[Post Count Padder]

I know it feels like the "cheap" option but adding Adell gives some runway/buffer for Caissie in RF should he stumble. Going into last season with Jon Berti as our backup OF went as well as everyone expected. I wonder if the Angels could be open to an Adell/Detmers package. Kill two birds with one stone.

[Rcal10]

8 minutes ago, Post Count Padder said:

I know it feels like the "cheap" option but adding Adell gives some runway/buffer for Caissie in RF should he stumble. Going into last season with Jon Berti as our backup OF went as well as everyone expected. I wonder if the Angels could be open to an Adell/Detmers package. Kill two birds with one stone.

Are you putting Detmers is the rotation or pen? What bird is Detmers killing?