Ranking the top 5 Chicago Cubs who’ve packed their bags in recent years

Unfortunately, all good things must come to end. As is the case with all professional sports teams. Though with the Chicago Cubs, it really didn’t have to end as abruptly as it did. The second half version of the 2021 team went on a terrible losing streak, but have also bounced back nicely and shown they have some solid pieces still moving forward.

Regardless, the core is no more. Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant are the three main players everybody thinks about when it comes to that group. However, they are not the only players we’ve seen pack their bags who had a significant impact and helped bring success along the way. Sometimes, you wish players could stay forever, regardless of if they play well or not. We tend to get attached to the ones we love and not think twice about what we see on the stat sheet. Some moves, like Yu Darvish, are just mind-boggling to try to understand until it all comes full circle.

The Cubs had a plan all along to cut costs and started doing so this past offseason long before any of the Wrigleyville faithful knew what was coming down the road. As the team’s president of baseball operations, I respect the decisions that had to be made and I admire the hard work and dedication Jed Hoyer put in to make the team as good as it can be moving forward. If Hoyer had endless funds available to him, I’m quite sure we would be seeing something different on the field right now.

Ultimately, it is up to the Ricketts family to give the green light to sign players to lengthy and expensive contracts. All Hoyer can do is whatever he can to make the Cubs an attractive place to want to play once funds are made available to him. In this case with the core, they simply weren’t.

Was it Jed Hoyer that didn’t want to sign Baez to a contract extension or was it Ricketts not being comfortable with the dollars involved there? Maybe we’ll never know. The fact is, over the recent years, many of our favorite players have come and gone. With that being said, let’s take a look at the top Cubs we’ve lost in recent years and their contributions to the team.