Brandon Glick

Yes. The most important move Jed Hoyer could ever make

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images The phrase "limitations breed creativity" isn't often applied to athletics, but as the lone major American sport without a salary cap (for now), Major League Baseball creates a unique environment that demands creativity from certain franchises in order to remain relevant. That's perhaps never been more salient than it is right now, with payroll disparities across the league reaching record levels. In a world where the Los Angeles Dodgers are spending $120 million for one season of Kyle Tucker (when factoring in luxury tax payments), it's growing increasingly difficult for small-market teams to compete for titles. And yet, that hasn't stopped the Milwaukee Brewers from winning four of the last five NL Central titles, despite playing in the same division as the big-market Chicago Cubs. A rebuild from the latter certainly helped matters, but the Crew have just kept on winning, despite never running a yearly payroll higher than $135 million. It's been astonishing work of creating a yearly product that is always larger than the sum of its parts. However, those payroll limitations have caught up with the Brewers. After Brandon Woodruff accepted the qualifying offer (valued a little over $22 million in 2026), the team was up against their internal spending limits. They eventually capitulated to the financial strain, trading longtime ace Freddy Peralta to the New York Mets (alongside Tobias Meyers) in exchange for top prospects Brandon Sproat and Jett Williams. This isn't a new phenomenon for the Brewers, either. Just last offseason, they dealt All-Star closer Devin Williams and received their third baseman of the future (Caleb Durbin) in return. The year before that, it was Cy-Young-winner Corbin Burnes getting shipped to Baltimore for a gaggle of high-upside prospects, including starting shortstop Joey Ortiz. Wind the clock back a few more months, and you'll find Josh Hader being sent via first-class delivery to San Diego. Rip up a bunch of yearly calendars, and you'll find history repeating itself in the form of Yovani Gallardo being traded to the Texas Rangers. All of those players had just one year remaining on their respective deals at the time of their trades, save for Hader who had an extra half-year of control (his was a trade deadline deal). That's simply the price of doing business in Milwaukee; they know they can't pay to extend their superstar players, and so they capitalize on each one's value before they reach free agency. It's a savvy way of doing business, though it also comes with the tremendous risk of always parting with the best player at the time of the trade. There's no guarantee that the prospects the Brewers receive — even with with their excellent scouting department and player development program — will ever amount to anything in the major leagues. This brings us back to the Cubs, who often find themselves on the opposite end of such deals. You need look no further than last winter for such an example, when they acquired Tucker from the Houston Astros for a package headlined by top prospect Cam Smith and third baseman Isaac Paredes. There are new ways to assess Tucker's tenure now that he's officially leaving after only one year in the Windy City, but that's sort of the point of such trades; the superstar-receiving party is guaranteed one year of the player, whereas the superstar-sending party takes on the risk of developing prospects who come with many years of control. The Cubs got what they hoped for out of their sole season with Tucker — a 90-win season, a return to contention, and a playoff series win — but the value he provided in 2025 is all the value he'll ever provide to the team. The Astros, meanwhile, now get a half-decade with Cam Smith to try and keep their own contention window open a little longer. Now, for all their regular-season success, the Brewers haven't won a World Series during this current window. In fact, they haven't even made the Fall Classic, and they've only made the NLCS twice (2018, 2025) just to be stopped short by the free-spending Dodgers both times. Trading great players for long-term control of really good ones is a solid strategy for a 162-game season, but lowering your short-term ceiling is only bound to hurt you in the playoffs. That's the reality facing the Brewers, though. When they trade a star, they'll get young talent in return, but they also do so with the intention of cutting payroll. They only saved $8 million in the Peralta deal, but you can be sure ownership is counting every dollar that comes in or out of the organization. Though the Ricketts may be prone to the same billionaire phenomenon, the Cubs don't have to trade stars in order to save money. There's a good argument to be made that they should be extending more of their in-house standouts (á la the Braves or Red Sox), but that's a conversation for another time. What matters now is that Chicago's list of impending free agents following the 2026 season is as large as it is impressive; the non-exhaustive highlights include Shota Imanaga, Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Jameson Taillon, and Nico Hoerner. Factor in options that aren't likely to be exercised, and you can include Carson Kelly and Matthew Boyd among that crop. Of course, the 2026 Cubs will be better with all of those players on their team. If the goal is simply to win the title this year, there's no argument to be made otherwise. But we know Jed Hoyer likes to talk about this being a multi-year operation, and the 2027 Cubs will be significantly worse if most or all of those players walk in exchange for nothing, save for maybe a few extra draft picks via declined qualifying offers. Barring a few extensions that add more long-term money to the books, isn't it reasonable for the organization to follow in the Brewers' footsteps and trade a player or two for some major-league ready talent that has to play for cheap? All this lamenting and posturing isn't meant to encourage the conclusion that the Cubs should mimic every facet of the Brewers' operation. As the big-market, deep-pocketed team in the division, the North Siders should aggressively spend on marquee talents, much like they did with Alex Bregman a few weeks ago. They should be aggressive in trades during competitive windows, much like they were in acquiring Edward Cabrera from the Miami Marlins. Even in the rare instance that a superstar player like Kyle Tucker becomes available, it'd be foolish for the Cubs not to at least throw their hat in the ring. But this is a salient conversation amidst a potential MLB lockout, crumbling TV deal, and, of course, the Cubs' self-imposed budget constraints. With so many players due for free agency in a year's time, the front office must weigh the ramifications of lowering the short-term ceiling in order to keep the window of contention pried open a little longer. The Brewers have successfully walked that tightrope for the last half-decade; the Cubs may be destined for second place until they muster the courage to take the same leap of faith. View full article

Now that Kyle Tucker has signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers, should the Chicago Cubs get a passing grade for their original trade with the Houston Astros? View full video

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Chicago Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner finds himself the subject of trade rumors as the team continues to swing and miss on free-agent targets. Should the Cubs actually try to deal one of their best, most consistent players this offseason? View full video

Image courtesy of © Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images Compared to star closers like Edwin Diaz and Devin Williams — both of whom signed long-term contracts in free agency this offseason — the Chicago Cubs' bullpen remodeling has been about reeling in a bunch of small fishes, rather than a giant one worth posing with. Phil Maton has been the only multi-year splurge made by the front office; other additions include a reunion with Caleb Thielbar, and one-year pacts with Hoby Milner and Jacob Webb. The team's latest signing of Hunter Harvey fits that same model, though he brings a bit more heat (literally and figuratively) to a relief corps in desperate need of some true high-leverage horsepower. All of the Cubs' reliever additions this winter have one thing in common: they don't throw fast. Thielbar, Milner and Maton ranked toward the very bottom of the league with fastballs that averaged less than 90 mph in 2025, and Webb was below average in that category as well. Daniel Palencia should be a reliable leverage arm moving forward, but as the primary (only?) source of meaningful velocity in the bullpen, Craig Counsell was going to have to get really creative with piecing together outs from the relief corps Jed Hoyer had assembled. Luckily, Harvey can add some gas to the fire. His fastball averaged more than 96 mph this past season with the Kansas City Royals, and in 2022-23, he was pumping it in around 98.3 mph. Even if injuries have sapped some of his juice, there's clearly a high-powered arm attached to the 31-year-old. Of course, injuries are a big part of the equation for the right-hander, who has struggled to stay healthy since turning pro. Despite turning in a 0.00 ERA and 1.35 FIP this past season, he only made 12 appearances (10 2/3 innings) due to a teres major strain and a separate Grade 2 adductor strain. In fact, he's only made 50 appearances in a season once (2023), and his healthiest three-season stretch (2022-24) only saw him tackle about 150 innings. He's just not durable, hence the short-term nature of his deal. As long as he can stay relatively put together for 2026, that's of no great concern to the Cubs. He's struck out 27.4% of opposing hitters since the start of the 2022 season, and his walk rate plummeted to 2.6% in 2025. That's a wildly intriguing combination, even if hitters tend to crush the ball (40.7% hard-hit rate, 92.4 mph average exit velocity allowed) when they make contact. Those batted-ball trends can likely be chalked up to the fact that he relies so heavily on his four-seam fastball and lives so frequently in the zone; he still generates whiffs and chases at a solidly above-average rate. Harvey makes a living off his high-rise fastball and bowling-ball splitter, featuring them about 80% of the time, give or take a few pitches each season. Peculiarly, he absolutely feasts with run on his pitches rather than any real cutting action, which is somewhat of a departure from the norm for the Cubs. Perhaps there's some work to be done with his slider and curveball that he continues to oscillate favor with, as both pitches represent his best chances to work away from right-handed hitters (he's worked reverse splits quite often, including his small sample in 2025). Still, the whole point of adding Harvey was adding premium velocity to a bullpen short on it. Insofar as his fastball doesn't fall off a proverbial cliff in 2026, that one pitch alone should make him a breath of fresh air for Craig Counsell and Cubs fans alike. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images Shota Imanaga's return to the Chicago Cubs' rotation — after a bizarre double-opt-out that required the qualifying offer to mend — should be a boon at large for the team in 2026, even if his home run problems render him less effective than the pitcher he was in 2024 and the first half of 2025. However, his presence (and the looming return of Justin Steele from elbow surgery) puts the Cubs in a weird spot when it comes to one of their best depth arms. Javier Assad took 29 starts for the North Siders in 2024, and he entered camp with an eye on yet another job at the back of Craig Counsell's rotation. Unfortunately, an oblique strain had other ideas, holding him out until August 12. That long layoff limited him to just seven starts (plus one bullpen appearance) and 37.0 innings, but he was more or less the pitcher fans have come to expect when stepped back onto the mound — he recorded a 3.65 ERA, 47.4% ground-ball rate, while pitching to about 1.0 fWAR per 100 frames. His strikeouts were down, but so too were the amount of walks and home runs he surrendered. He pitched to contact effectively, letting the Cubs' superlative defense take care of the many balls in play. In other words, he was Javier Assad. Long one of baseball's best FIP-beaters (a topic our @Jason Ross explored in depth here), the 28-year-old's expected stats continued to betray his actual production. His 4.24 FIP this past season was more than a half-run higher than his ERA; his expected ERA (xERA) was 4.79, clear of his actual mark by more than a full digit. It's no secret why a contact-manager like Assad continues to outperform his FIP; the stat hones in on the outcomes a pitcher controls (strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches, and home runs). It may be a better indicator of a pitcher's potential to dominate, but it hardly accounts for a pitcher who knows how to pitch to his defense's strengths as well as Assad does. A lot of what drives his success is a seven-pitch mix that includes three fastballs (a four-seamer, a cutter, and a sinker), two distinct slider shapes (a traditional slider and a sweeper), and a curveball and a changeup. None of these pitches are actually incredible, mind you — in a small sample, his sweeper and four-seamer were the only offerings to generate an xwOBA below .300 this year. He gets by on a quantity-over-quality approach, which works when you're able to differentiate movement profiles as much as Assad does. *Chart courtesy of Baseball Savant Again, that sheer diversity doesn't lead to dazzling results. His strikeout rate has never been above 21% in a single season, and he routinely ranks toward the bottom of the league in inducing whiffs and chases. Were it not for a proven ability to miss barrels and generate ground balls, Assad probably wouldn't even be in the league. And yet, he has proven, time and time again, to have that ability, expected stats be damned. Putting him in a Keegan Thompson-esque, multi-inning-fireman role is simply not the right play here. Assad is a starter, plain and simple. Thanks to that seven-pitch arsenal, he tends to get better as he gets deeper into games. He's also significantly better with runners on base, which would sound like a load of small-sample nonsense if he hadn't repeated the same feat four years running. So, what's the plan here? He isn't taking a spot from Matthew Boyd, Jameson Taillon, Cade Horton, or Imanaga in the rotation, and Steele would have the inside track on the fifth job if and when he's healthy. Plus, Colin Rea is still a factor after his strong effort in 2025, and Jordan Wicks and Ben Brown are still clogging up space on the 40-man roster. Would the Cubs really stash Assad in Triple-A (he has two option years remaining) until a need arises? Will they try to treat him like a true swingman, á la the way the Cincinnati Reds have used Nick Martinez the past few years? It's something of a good problem to have since Assad has proven so effective in his opportunities, despite what the expected metrics suggest. He's not so good that he'll cause internal strife by ringing up 15 Triple-A hitters a night, but it's also a waste of his talents to have him soak up mop-up duty on either side of a blowout. What the Cubs need is an Alec Mills or Keegan Thompson. What they have is Javier Assad. If they can find the balancing act between those two distinct archetypes, perhaps a brighter future lies ahead for both team and player. View full article

The Chicago Cubs' quiet offseason continues, as the team made two more savvy signings in Caleb Thielbar and Tyler Austin while waiting out the top end of the free-agent market. View full video

The Chicago Cubs didn't do much at the Winter Meetings, but as their signing of reliever Hoby Milner proves, they're clearly planning to be active throughout the rest of the offseason. View full video

The Chicago Cubs wisely scooped up strikeout artist Phil Maton for their depleted bullpen, but their need for velocity and more relievers still stands out like a sore thumb on the roster. View full video

It's that time of year again! North Side Baseball invites you to discuss your favorite players and moments from the 2025 Chicago Cubs season! View full video