Jed Hoyer ignored the one Cubs flaw that ended their playoff run

Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer held his annual post-mortem with the press on Thursday, covering an array of topics, ranging from how he feels about the 2025 season to Kyle Tucker and everything in between.

But almost immediately, when pressed on the team's offensive struggles in the postseason, Hoyer pushed back, crediting the pitching of the San Diego Padres and Milwaukee Brewers, which combined to hold Cubs hitters to a .221/.288/.390 slash line across eight games.

Given how pitcher-friendly Wrigley Field has played in recent years, one might expect the bulk of those offensive struggles to come at home (also considering they played five of their eight postseason games there) - but that wasn't the case. It was away from Wrigley that the Cubs struggled the most, batting just .147 at American Family Field in the NLDS.

Cubs' feast-or-famine offense proved to be their undoing in October

The issue with the Cubs' offense, especially in the second half, was a feast-or-famine see-saw with key guys, namely Pete Crow-Armstrong and Kyle Tucker. When they were both dialed in during the first half, Chicago looked like a legitimate World Series contender. When both stopped hitting late in the summer, the offense, as a whole, looked like a shell of what we all saw just months earlier.

But circling back to the team's October performance, the simple truth is key pieces didn't produce. Crow-Armstrong slashed .185/.214/.185 in the playoffs, striking out in 12 of his 27 at-bats. Veteran Dansby Swanson punched out in 15 of his 26 trips to the plate, batting only .154. Despite a huge first inning homer in Game 4 of the NLDS, Ian Happ was a total non-factor at the plate in the playoffs.

One of the guys who did put up solid numbers, Kyle Tucker, seems ticketed for greener pastures in free agency. And even then, the lasting image Cubs fans will have from the All-Star is him coming up empty in a huge spot in Game 5 when Chicago could've turned the tide of the game - and, perhaps, altered its postseason fate.