Giving Jed Hoyer an end-of-season grade as Cubs look ahead to a chaotic winter

Turn the clock back to March. The Chicago Cubs had just announced extensions for Pete Crow-Armstrong and Nico Hoerner and were coming off an offseason where they traded for Edward Cabrera and landed Alex Bregman in free agency. World Series expectations were running rampant in Wrigleyville.

Hindsight, though, is 20/20 and we're looking at Jed Hoyer's body of work very differently after the Cubs squandered a late-season edge for the top Wild Card spot, winning just 89 games and finishing 14 games behind the Milwaukee Brewers, then getting swept by the San Diego Padres in the Wild Card Series.

"It feels like we let an opportunity slip away that we won't get back. We have to work really hard to get back to that place. I think losses like this are really motivating. But in the moment right now, I feel for the fans who supported this team so much because I feel like they deserved a long run this year and we let it slip away."

Chicago's pitching was decimated by injuries, but all of Hoyer's additions fell well short of expectations. Cabrera's first year with the Cubs was a disaster and every bullpen arm he spent meaningful dollars on wound up being non-factors for one reason or another. I mean, come on: $6 million for Hunter Harvey?

At the deadline, Hoyer was incredibly aggressive, adding Clay Holmes and Kevin Gausman to the rotation, locking down a long-term bullpen arm in Ryan Zeferjahn and finding a perfect platoon partner for Ian Happ in left in Tyrone Taylor. All of those moves, again, felt like slam-dunk wins, but all three pitchers were inconsistent and Holmes never even pitched in the Cubs' short-lived playoff run.

Jed Hoyer's body of work was a mixed bag for the Cubs in 2026

The PCA and Hoerner extensions paired with the Bregman signing put Hoyer on solid footing right out of the gate. But his 'spread the wealth' approach to bullpen building (and on questionable arms at that) directly played into the team's undoing down the stretch and you have to hope we're going to see him turn over a new leaf in that regard this winter.

No one could have predicted the sheer number of injuries the pitching staff would suffer this year and, credit where credit is due, Hoyer assembled an impressive depth chart that allowed the Cubs to weather the storm all season long. But, as was the case in the pen, it was more quantity than high-end quality and when October hit, Chicago looked overmatched.

Without Crow-Armstrong delivering arguably the greatest single-season performance in Cubs history, we may very well be viewing Hoyer's efforts in a very different light. But in the end, we need more high-caliber stability in the pitching staff and until he delivers that, he'll continue to catch strays from an increasingly frustrated fanbase.

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