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Just before Opening Day, I projected that the Cubs would win the 2025 NL Central, with 89 wins. I had the Brewers just one small step behind, at 88-74. At multiple points over the first half of the season, I made note of the fact that despite what appeared to be trends away from that projection, it still felt right to me. Now, a day before the MLB trade deadline and roughly two-thirds of the way through the season, the Cubs could go roughly .500 from here and finish with exactly that 89-73 record. I feel like I largely got them right this year.
Justin Steele's injury was a major setback, but not a wholly unexpected one. Pete Crow-Armstrong's season has been a wonderful surprise, but there have been some oft-overlooked warts lurking there all along, and indeed, Crow-Armstrong has a .284 OBP in his last 40 games and is starting to have lapses in the field and on the bases. Many things have varied from any specific expectation, but they've averaged out, and looking forward, I see a team that will need to fight hard to get to 90 wins. That's fine; 90 wins was a reasonable goal for this season and will certainly get them into October, if they get there.
What I had wrong was the Brewers. Their unexpected performances haven't evened out, and they're not going to. Between Isaac Collins, Jacob Misiorowski, Quinn Priester and Andrew Vaughn, Milwaukee is legitimately five or six wins better than I had projected in March. I expect them to win 94 games or so, which means that the Cubs have to keep the pedal down in order to keep pace—or resign themselves to playing in a Wild Card Series somewhere just after the end of the regular season, at best.
Should that alter Jed Hoyer's approach over the next 29 hours or so? It's a bit hard to say. The Cubs extended the contract of their president of baseball operations earlier this week, in a head-scratching, cart-before-the-division-title move. Presumably, that wasn't a move designed to take pressure off Hoyer, so much as to redistribute that pressure in a healthier way throughout the organization. Either way, though, Hoyer now has job security. He faces the dilemma, therefore, of whether to trade from the long-term depth of the organization to make this team better by a significant enough margin to give them a real chance to beat out the Brewers over the final two months.
It's been hard to feel good about the (no pun intended) prospects of going all-in over the last two nights. The Cubs didn't just lose to the Brewers; they got righteously whupped. None of the main candidates identified as their top trade targets would have materially changed what happened over the last two games; they were beaten by wide margins and in all facets. It doesn't feel like marginal upgrades will close the lacuna between the clubs.
Feelings be damned, though, the Brewers will cool off at least slightly, sometime between now and the end of September. When they do, the Cubs have to be able to pounce, as Milwaukee has pounced by racing past the limping, .500ish Cubs over the last month and change. Right now, the Cubs roster lacks the depth and the dynamism to do that. They need better pitchers at the back end of their starting rotation and in middle relief. They need better bench options, to give their regular position players some needed rest and put the danger back in those bats, the lift back in their step. If Hoyer doesn't acquire multiple players with real and immediately visible utility to this roster by Thursday evening, his team will founder and fumfer their way to a quick October ouster—or worse.
That won't necessarily mean the team failed. They're probably going to hit that 89-win benchmark I set for them four months ago; they might yet exceed it. It'll just mean they were overwhelmed by a team on a mission, doing things better than them. Since the Brewers are set up better for the future than are the Cubs, though, that would be extremely cold comfort. To get the Cubs out of the quagmire they've been stuck in since before he took over the job, Hoyer needs to get his arms extended and hit a home run at this trade deadline. Whether he even has the pop in his bat to do that when he barrels one up is not clear.
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