Ranking the 5 best moves the Chicago Cubs have made in the Jed Hoyer era

Jed Hoyer's reign as Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations is heading into its fifth and possibly final year. Although Hoyer's tenure kicked off with a controversial rebuild, the Cubs would not be heading into 2025 as the favorites to win the National League Central if it wasn't for his decision-making.

With the Cubs hopefully on the precipice of returning to playoff contention, here are my rankings of Jed Hoyer's top 5 moves.

5. Signing Dansby Swanson

Dansby Swanson may not put up the flashiest numbers compared to other shortstops around the league. But his signing with the Cubs before the 2022 season was an important move that the Hoyer regime should be proud of.

For one, Swanson provides leadership in the clubhouse. After six seasons with the Atlanta Braves, including four straight postseason runs and a World Series victory, Swanson became a seasoned veteran in MLB. His joining the Cubs marked a new era after the World Series core of Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, and Javier Baez was dismantled.

Swanson's presence on the roster attracts others to the Cubs and makes Chicago a more desirable free-agent destination. He is a lockdown player at shortstop who plays gold-glove defense and gives it his all on the field, to the point where he apparently played with a hernia during the 2024 season. Perhaps this injury negatively impacted his offense, which looked abysmal at times last year, and it sounds like he should have told the team about it earlier. But to Hoyer's point, this shows who Swanson is. A fierce competitor that wants to play every single day.

“We were surprised, candidly, which is fine,” Hoyer reportedly said Monday at MLB winter meetings. “That’s his personality. He was going to play, but clearly he was feeling something he wanted to get fixed.”

Hoyer went into the 2022-2023 offseason wanting to sign one of the four big shortstops on the market and he got a great one in Swanson on a relatively affordable contract. We've only seen two years of Swanson's seven-year pact worth $177 million. Hopefully, he can avoid playing injured in 2025 and beyond to lead this team to a postseason run.

4. The Kyle Tucker trade

I may be getting ahead of myself ranking this one so high this early, but this move has that transformational feel to it. Kyle Tucker is simply one of the best players in baseball. The term five-tool player gets thrown around a bit too much these days, but it applies perfectly to the 28-year-old right fielder. He hits for power and contact, has great baserunning instincts, a solid throwing arm and he has a Gold Glove to his name for his work defensively.

When it became apparent that the three-time All-Star was available during the 2024 offseason, Hoyer pounced at the opportunity and used his 2024 first-round draft pick Cam Smith to get the deal done. The steep price also saw third baseman Isaac Paredes, who was under team control for three more seasons, go the the Houston Astros along with pitcher Hayden Wesneski. This is arguably the most aggressive move Hoyer has completed during his tenure and it signals his eagerness to win in 2025 after back-to-back 83-win campaigns.

Tucker only has one year of team control left, but his offensive prowess could be a game-changer for a lineup that has been starved of elite-caliber production for years. From 2021-2023, Tucker finished with a BWAR above 5.0, which would have led the Cubs in each case. Although he broke his shin and missed half the season in 2024, Tucker still posted a 4.7 BWAR with 23 home runs, a wRC+ of 180 and a .993 OPS. This trade could go down as a legacy-defining move for Hoyer.

3. Signing Craig Counsell

Hoyer displayed his shrewdness with this move, which shocked virtually everyone in the baseball world. Even the Tucker trade was reported by insiders for days before it happened, but Craig Counsell signing with the Cubs was a tight secret until after it was complete.

After the 2023 postseason, Counsell's contract with the rival Milwaukee Brewers had expired, and he was able to speak with other teams. No one knew the Cubs were even in on the negotiations and insiders were convinced Counsell, who is regarded as one of the best managers in baseball right now, would sign with the New York Mets.

To pry away a manager of Counsell's prowess from your bitter rival is bold, but to then give the guy a record-setting $40 million contract is just flashy. Unfortunately, the results didn't show up in the win column in 2024, and the Cubs still finished behind Milwaukee and spent October sitting at home.

But we're only heading into Counsell's sophomore year with the Cubs organization. He spent the prior nine years with the Brewers so there were undoubtedly some adjustments to make being with a new club for the first time. Counsell also wasn't able to hire his own coaching staff until after the 2024 season, so having his hand-picked guys around him should help set a more consistent tone and culture moving forward.

There are four more seasons left for Counsell to leave his mark in Chicago and it feels like he is just getting started. Hoyer is giving Counsell a different group of guys to work with, including a superstar in Tucker, with more pitching likely on the way. The full extent of signing Counsell probably can't be gauged until a few years have gone by, but the move was downright unbelievable by Hoyer's standards and it again signaled a desire to compete oconsistently

2. Signing Seiya Suzuki

Seiya Suzuki signed with the Cubs before the 2022 season for a five-year deal worth $85 million. It was a smart move that has paid off on the field, on the payroll and in the Cubs' future international free-agency pursuits.

Suzuki has arguably been the most consistent batter on the Cubs over the last two years. He's a disciplined hitter who takes his walks, hits for average (.283 in 2024) and hits the ball with authority. Although his defense did not pan out as expected when he came over from Japan, and he will likely be the team's designated hitter with Tucker coming aboard, Suzuki can still provide a solid big-league at-bat. And maybe focusing on hitting full-time will unlock more of his potential and finally see the 30-year-old eclipse 25 home runs.

Another aspect of Suzuki's contract is that he attracts other Japanese players. The Cubs have fostered a good environment for Japanese players to feel comfortable and excel. This also goes back to the Cubs signing Yu Darvish a few years prior. Although Darvish was eventually traded to the San Diego Padres when the Cubs started their rebuild, he still speaks highly about the Cubs and helped convince both Suzuki and Shota Imanaga to sign with Chicago.

Suzuki and Imanaga are now two vital players to the Cubs' future success and their positive experiences and on-the-field success are also the main reasons why Chicago is in the running for Roki Sasaki, the next big Japanese free agent.

1. Replenishing the farm system

This is sort of a few moves wrapped into one large decision that Jed Hoyer made in 2021. And that was to sell off his former World Series-winning players and begin what was in practice a rebuild. This was a rough way for Hoyer to begin his tenure as the Cubs' shot-caller, but this was the correct way forward in hindsight.

Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez have not been the same players since leaving Chicago. Bryant has been the victim of many unfortunate injuries that have significantly limited his playing time. Rizzo is getting into his late 30's and not producing at nearly the level he did for the Cubs in th emid-2010's. And Baez looks like a shell of his former self after signing a large deal with the Detroit Tigers.

It was a tough decision, but it was one that netted the Cubs several players that are becoming cornerstones of the team's future, including Pete Crow-Armstrong, Kevin Alcantara and Owen Caissie. Hoyer also oversaw the Cubs' transition into focusing on drafting and developing pitching. This is a departure from the previous philosophy of developing hitting and paying for pitching during the Theo Epstein era. This has seen the team develop contributors like Justin Steele, Jordan Wicks, Javier Assad and Porter Hodge.

Others are coming like Cade Horton and Brandon Birdsell. This era marks the first time in decades the Cubs have developed their own pitching prospects into capable major league starting pitchers. Hoyer hired guys like Craig Breslow and Carter Hawkins to help oversee this new era of pitching development, and it continues with the hiring of pitching guru Tyler Zombro.

This not only helps fill out the major league roster, but pitchers throughout the Cubs' organization are becoming valuable to other teams. Flame-throwing reliever Hunter Bigge became a vital trade chip last deadline when the team acquired Isaac Paredes from the Tampa Bay Rays. Paredes later became the main piece of the Tucker trade.

The Cubs simply wouldn't be where they are today if Hoyer hadn't shifted the organization's development philosophy and pulled the trigger on a rebuild. Hopefully the results start showing up on the field but it's hard to look back and think he should have done much differently at the 2021 trade deadline.