Chicago Cubs: Deciphering recent noise coming from a new front office

Chicago Cubs:  What does this mean? – Focusing on areas of ‘major importance’

"“His expertise on making players better, whether it’s through player development or high performance, seemed like a really natural fit. And on areas of major importance, certainly we’ll come together and work on those things.”"

What does that mean? Hoyer has the second-or-third-to-last word on acquisitions. Hawkins is going to be the player development czar. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust Hoyer, especially in that arena. However, a development czar is a capital idea, especially given the prospect haul the Cubs’ braintrust dealt the Core™ for, who performed better than expectations during the last third of their respective seasons. Indeed some are still turning heads in the Arizona Fall League.

This is great, for maybe 2024. Brennen Davis is likely a year away still. If there is a season (don’t forget those CBA negotiations that are right around the corner), Hoyer will have to make ‘intelligent spending’ a reality. It doesn’t look like Hawkins will be making those phone calls. He’ll be busy building the scouting department, as much as he can… considering that the Cubs fired a good portion of their scouts a year or so ago.

It looked then like a cost-saving measure, but likely it was a two-way street, with this organizational change in mind. The Cubs have show that they have the ability to plan long-range. They just need to work on making good plans, and on execution.

Let’s hope that Hoyer is as good as his August wheel-and-deal seems to show, and that it wasn’t an accident. Let’s hope Carter Hawkins can apply process, and that it works. Or, speaking of execution, heads will roll.