As the Chicago Cubs yo-yo their way through the 2023 season, President Jed Hoyer has experienced the same highs and lows as their fans.
Maintaining an even keel is something players and managers have talked about for decades, but it’s easier said than done when the Aug. 1 trade deadline is approaching and everyone expects you to make some moves. After the post-London cold stretch, time is running out on Hoyer to decide whether to buy or sell.
“That’s the job,” Hoyer said Tuesday before the Cubs’ 7-6, 11-inning win over the Milwaukee Brewers. “You have to constantly realize that how you present yourself matters. In a great year you’re going to lose 40% of the games and you have to maintain real perspective.
“And that means you have to maintain real perspective when you win nine out of 10 or lose nine out of 10. They’re the same thing. It’s really difficult. … I don’t think I’m perfect at it — my wife and family would probably agree with that — but I try to get better at it every year and have that perspective.”
In London, Chairman Tom Ricketts told Cubs fans the team probably would be a buyer.
“Things can come off the rails, but I don’t think they will,” Ricketts said, just before things came off the rails.
So at what point does Hoyer have to decide which direction they’ll go?
“By definition the calendar is going to tell us on Aug. 1 — that is the point,” he said. “Obviously a week ago at this time we were talking about (being on) the buy side. I still want to be there. We just need to start the clock back to .500 again and we need to start that quickly in order to do that.
“I’ve been talking about this for 12 years or whatever. You have to evaluate your team and you also have to evaluate the standings. They are two different evaluations. We need to get close to .500.”
Naturally, most Cubs fans want the team to be a buyer. It’s not their money, after all.
Hoyer said he can’t take that into account when he makes his decision. He conceded the Cubs should be better than their 39-45 record, based on a positive run differential and above-average starting pitching.
“When you look at the underlying numbers, we absolutely should be in the division race right now,” he said. “That’s the truth of the matter. Now that doesn’t matter. They don’t put a banner around underlying numbers. We have to translate that into wins and losses, and we haven’t done that enough.
“I’m always going to make what I think is the right decision for the organization, and sometimes that’s in the short term and sometimes it’s in the long term. If the question is ‘Am I dispassionate?’ … I am.
“This isn’t about me. It’s not about the fans. It’s about what — in my opinion and the opinion of my staff — what are we going to do that’s in the best interest of this organization. I want to do what’s right for the Cubs.”
The Cubs have some built-in excuses for their poor record since the London Series, including jet lag, “very unhealthy” air quality when they got home and long rain delays over the weekend.
“It doesn’t matter why,” Hoyer said. “Truly, are there other challenges associated with it? Yeah, of course. But they’re not going to weigh those differently at the end of the season when we look back, so I don’t really care. We dragged ourselves back to a really good place and then we’ve really hurt that position over the last week.
“I don’t think the entire team has changed in one week. But at the same time, we can’t just continue to give up games. Now we have to claw back again. We clawed back from 10 under (.500) to one under, and now we’ve fallen back again and have to do it again.
“That’s been the frustrating thing for me about this season. We’ve had two stretches where I thought we played really, really good baseball for quite a while and several stretches where we’ve played equally bad. The distribution has been really big. When we win, we’ve played really well. When we’ve played badly, we’ve lost a lot of games to .500 in a hurry, and we need to stop that bleeding and climb back again.”
Hoyer believes the most glaring reason for the prolonged losing stretches has been a lack of high-leverage performances by both pitchers and hitters. The Cubs are 11-21 in one- and two-run games despite having a plus-23 run differential. Everyone else in the National League Central has a negative run differential.
How to fix that problem is what keeps Hoyer up at night.
“This is what I do,” he said. “I spend all my time thinking, ‘What are the reasons for that?’ Because we’ve all watched the same thing.
“Where we’ve struggled is in what I (call) ‘messy’ games. We haven’t won those types of games, and ultimately we have to find a way and we have a little less than half a season to do that. That’s where my focus is.”
The clock is ticking on Hoyer and the Cubs.
Which way they’ll go is anyone’s guess.
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