He's not a good GM, that's my opinion and I'm going to stick with it.
When you look at the draft, I don't think there's a blueprint or foundation of how this team is built. When you look at the Cubs in the Theo days, it was obvious college hitters. When you look at Seattle today, it's mainly college pitching. I'm glad guys like Hartshorn and Kaleb Wing are off to great starts to the season, but as we have seen from Kevin Alcantara, we need those players to produce in the MLB when/if given the opportunity.
And we have seen Cubs farm players that haven't been able to produce in the MLB. First person that comes to mind is Luke Little, who just demoted to AA-Knoxville (even though I still prefer to call them Tennessee). Miguel Amaya has been average. I don't think it's a good thing we have two catchers playing, just like a NFL/college football having two QB's, just believe in the "if we have two QB's (or catchers), then we really don't have a QB/catcher."
Busch was a safe trade because the Dodgers can't play him because of Freddie Freeman. Nico is an okay player. We all know Dansby is great defensively but is average/below average offensively. Bregman is similar to Busch, a safe acquisition that filled a desire need. Outfield: Suzuki is average, Happ is good, and PCA is great defensively, and is hot offensively but an emotional train wreck at times.
I was watching the Rangers/Red Sox game on NBC, and one of the commentators said "when you look at the Rangers, in 2023, all of the hitters had career numbers. Now, they're just an average/bad offense team." I think that has perfectly described the Cubs in 2025.
Last season, Dansby had 144 hits which is the most he had with the Cubs so far. PCA was playing like an MVP for the first half of the season. Busch had 34 home runs which is a massive outlier so far in his career, he only has 8 this season. Seiya had a 30 homer/100RBI year and will go back into the 20-24 home run pace which is where he is usually at. Carson Kelly even went nuts last season. So our offense is playing at a career rate, and we all know that, only to see Willie Castro and Kittredge and Soroka as our trade deadline additions. We all know that wasn't going to be enough.
Our starting pitcher doesn't have an A level arm, that's clear. Could've gone after Joe Ryan, but failed. Passed on Alcantara, Could've traded a young bat for a Seattle arm, but chose not to. Point being, the opportunities to address the starting pitching last season at the deadline hurt the team in the postseason play. Shota was toast and was terrible in Milwaukee. I mean, Collin Rea had a postseason start if I'm not mistaken.
So we had guys that had career years last season, but we have failed to elevate the team and put them closer to the top. This team is not close and has not closed the gap on LA, which I know is hard. But Milwaukee is in much better shape than the Cubs, and I don't see there being any intentions to close that gap, too.
And as a result, we don't have a player that's in the top 5 in all-star voting at their respected positions. Jed is scared to make a big boy move (buying or selling) and it shows. That's just my opinion.
I want this team to win a World Series soon, but I'd rather for them to go 62-100 than consistently 85-77 and hope they can catch fire in the postseason, when we all know they can't make it past the NLDS/Dodgers.