Calculating Jed Hoyer's impact on the 2025 Chicago Cubs

The Cubs' front office has brought in 30 new players (and subtracted 14 old ones) since the end of the 2024 season. Has the team benefitted from this tinkering?
Chicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations Jed Hoyer at Media Availability Day.
Chicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations Jed Hoyer at Media Availability Day. | Michael Reaves/GettyImages

For better or worse, the 2025 Cubs are Jed Hoyer’s team.

As President of Baseball Ops, Hoyer’s the guy responsible for the presence of Kyle Tucker on the roster. He also pulled the trigger on the signings of Matt Boyd, Carson Kelly and Drew Pomeranz.

On the other hand, Hoyer also presided over the call-ups of an undistinguished rookie class that to date includes Matt Shaw and Cade Horton (and Ben Brown has been no better). He’s also the reason the best Cub system product, Cam Smith, is flourishing in Houston right now.

A quick look at the standings tells you how the Cubs are doing. They entered play Wednesday 15 games above .500 and 2.5 games ahead of Milwaukee in the NL Central.

How much of that Cubs lead is attributable to Hoyer? The answer lies in math.

Jed Hoyer's mathematical impact on the 2025 Cubs

Since the end of the 2024 season, Hoyer has added 30 faces to the existing Cubs cast either via trades, waiver wire claims, purchases, drafts, free agency or system call-ups.

He has also subtracted 14 players or prospects who have gone on to perform in the majors for other teams.

We can quantify Hoyer’s impact on the 2025 Cubs by calculating the impact of those 44 current and former Cubs on their teams’ 2025 seasons. Our measuring stick is Win Probability Added, which is an estimate of the impact of a player’s contribution to team success based both on raw numbers and also on the criticality of the moment at which those contributions occur.

The Kyle Tucker trade

By any objective measure, Tucker is having a solid 2025 on the North Side. He’s carrying a .290/.393/.533 slash line, he’s third in homers and RBIs on the team, and his 165 OPS+ -- that’s OPS normalized for park and era – is No. 1. He’s also in position to be a starting outfielder in the upcoming All Star Game.

For all those seasons, Tucker’s WPA works out to 2.8 games, easily the team’s best just past the season’s halfway mark. In that limited sense, Tucker alone is worth all of the Cubs’ 2.5 game advantage over the Brewers.

But, to truly calculate the impact of the Tucker trade on Chicago’s 2025 status, it’s necessary to also look at what Hoyer gave up. And it was substantial: third baseman Isaac Paredes, outfielder Cam Smith and pitcher Hayden Wesneski. As a trio, they have netted their new team +1.6 games of WPA, and that reduces the net impact of the Tucker trade to date to +0.9 games.

Granted, what Parades, or Smith for that matter, have done in Houston is not necessarily what they would have done in Chicago. These figures have to be read as estimates.

The pitching staff

Hoyer’s unrecognized strength this season has been identifying available free agent pitchers — both starters and relievers — and signing the best of them for Chicago. That calculation begins with Matt Boyd, now 8-3 with a 2.65 ERA in 17 starts. Boyd has been worth +0.9 WPA.

The bullpen transformation has been striking. Brad Keller, Drew Pomeranz, Caleb Thielbar, Chris Flexen, Ryan Pressley and Ryan Brasier all came in — a couple through trades, most via the open market — and have produced positive numbers.

The combined WPA of those half dozen new bullpen pieces amounts to +4.0 games worth of WPA. Daniel Palencia and Porter Hodge add another +1.0 WPA to the calculation.

The pitching downside has been largely inbred. Ben Brown and Cade Horton both arrived from Des Moines to assume rotation spots, and both have run into trouble, Brown (-1.7 WPA) more than Horton (-0.2).

In their support roles, Colin Rea, Eli Morgan, Luke Little, Genesis Cabrera and Jordan Wicks have also been liabilities, to the collective tune of -3.4 WPA.

That still leaves the cumulative impact of all 19 of Hoyer’s pitching additions for 2025 at +2.5 games, precisely the team’s margin over the Brewers.

The non-Tucker offense

The signings of free agent catchers Carson Kelly and Reese McGuire have been heralded, largely due to Kelly’s flaming hot start. As July arrives, both signings still produce positive values, although only by a cumulative +0.4 WPA. In fact, setting Tucker aside, Hoyer’s additions to the existing 2024 offense have been harmful.

For all his potential, Matt Shaw has to date been a -0.9 WPA player at third base. The other fringe additions — Jon Berti, Gage Workman, Moises Ballesteros, Justin Turner and Vidal Brujan — collectively subtract another -1.1 WPA from team performance.

Fortunately for Hoyer, the on-hand offense — basically Pete Crow-Armstrong and Seiya Suzuki —have blossomed so neatly that offensive upgrades not named Tucker were at most a fringe concern. Though the in-house guys don't add to our WPA total for Hoyer in 2025, it does reflect the strong lineup he built in prior seasons.

The departures

Hoyer’s impact on the Cubs’ 2025 performance to date is shaped both by the players he brought in and those he got shed of. There are 14 names who saw action for the Cubs in 2024 and who have seen at least some time in other uniforms this season.

Numerically, the biggest loss was the rookie Smith, who has run up a +1.3 WPA in Houston’s outfield. At +0.6, Paredes isn’t far behind.

From an impact standpoint, they’re followed by Mike Tauchman, allowed to walk in free agency and now toiling on the South Side. Playing on an occasional basis when injuries have permitted, Tauchman has been worth +0.6 WPA.

The headline grabbing off-season departure was Cody Bellinger, traded to the Yankees for Cody Poteet in December when the addition of Tucker made Belinger’s presence superfluous. Based on WPA, Hoyer did the right thing in dumping Bellinger. In the Bronx, his numbers reduce to a -0.4 WPA. It’s the same negative impact the Miami Marlins assumed when they acquired Matt Mervis from the Cubs for Brujan.

The total

Of the 30 players Hoyer has added to the Cubs picture since last October, 13 have produced positive WPA values, the top four being Tucker (+2.8), Keller (+1.0), Boyd (+0.9), and Pomeranz (0.9).

Five of the 30 have generated neutral value; the remaining dozen have had a negative impact. Brown (-1.7) is significantly the worst of those, while Shaw (-0.9) and Eli Morgan (-0.8) ranks as second and third-worst.

Of the 14 former Cub players or products active with other teams this season, Smith (+1.3 WPA for the Astros) is decidedly the most costly loss. Five of those 14 have generated positive impacts for their new teams, three have produced neutral impact, and the contributions of the final six have been costly to the acquiring teams. Bellinger and Mervis, -0.4 WPA for the Yanks and Marlins respectively, represent the floor in that category.

The sum total of all of Hoyer’s additions to the 2025 Cubs works out to +3.8 games as measured by WPA. Subtract from that the +1.5 game impact the 14 former Cubs have had on their new teams, and we can estimate Hoyer’s impact on the 2025 Cubs at the halfway point of the season to be +2.3 games.

That’s almost precisely the +2.5 game margin over the runner-up Brewers. And that makes it a good first half for Hoyer and the Cubs front office.

Hopefully, his trade deadline acquisitions will prove to have a similar boost to the team.