PHILADELPHIA — Shortly before the Chicago Cubs began their final road series of 2024 on Monday, president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer sat in the visitor’s dugout at Citizens Bank Park and acknowledged the obvious.
Hoyer didn’t disagree with manager Craig Counsell’s assessment of the Cubs, who were officially eliminated from the postseason Saturday: They need to be a 90-win team in the future if they’re going to consistently be in the playoffs.
“That is the goal,” Hoyer said before their series-opening 6-2 loss to the Phillies, who clinched the National League East for the first time since 2011 with the win. “We talk about the gap, I think that we’ve come a long way, and I feel really good about the position we’re in, but there’s still a gap, and that last stretch, that’s what we have to make up. … We have a lot of room to get to those 90-win teams that we need to have.
“The goal has to be: how do we get to that range?”
Last year, the Cubs were in the playoff hunt until the penultimate day of the regular season and finished one game out of the final wild-card spot with 83 wins. This year the Cubs, entering Monday with 80 wins, sit 7 games back of the last playoff spot while as many as six National League teams could finish with more than 90 wins, currently paced by the Dodgers (93) and Phillies (93).
“The standings don’t lie, I think you are what you are,” Hoyer said. “And I think when you look at the standings, there’s a big gap in the standings. There’s a big gap to the rest of the division, and all of us, from me on down, you have to look at it and, OK, what do we have to do this offseason and going forward to get to that place consistently? It’s not about doing it once. It’s about getting to a place where we feel like we can do it consistently.”
The evaluations will entail behind-the-scenes processes and player personnel. While there aren’t obvious areas to upgrade in the lineup, the Cubs might need to make tough decisions to close that gap. Pitching is always a priority too. Hoyer’s observations Monday came as the Cubs play a team that has utilized a mix of spending, trades and prospect development to be a World Series threat the last three seasons.
The Cubs don’t have an obvious fix to their on-field talent gap, barring a willingness by ownership to spend significantly to pay for a superstar hitter or use their organization’s prospect capital to upgrade areas or even further boost strengths. It’s an unenviable challenge the Cubs face.
“Obviously, we have to spend a lot of time identifying not only what holes on the roster we need to fill, it’s also what’s available and how do you make it happen?” Hoyer said. “Every offseason tapestry is complex, trying to figure out what’s available, what’s not and I think that we have to go through that process.
“We’ve spent a lot of time going through each department and really modernizing it, overhauling our processes, and I think you’re taking a really close look at that player personnel, professional scouting spaces, is really important. So all those things are things we have been doing, but are doing with urgency.”
Beyond external additions, the Cubs must continue to develop their younger players. The impact was felt this year when they didn’t get the expected workload from their up-and-coming arms. Right-handers Ben Brown, Hayden Wesneski, and Caleb Kilian, and left-hander Jordan Wicks combined for only 170 2/3 innings in the majors.
Brown (neck) has been out since June 9, Wicks is on the injured list for a third time this year and twice with a right oblique strain, Wesneski missed two months with a forearm strain while Kilian’s electric performance in spring was derailed by a shoulder injury that sidelined him for months.
The Cubs called up Kilian on Monday to use him as the bulk pitcher to follow Nate Pearson, who opened with one shutout inning. The Phillies put up eight hits and six runs (five earned) off Kilian in 5 2/3 innings.
“I thought he was throwing the ball exceptionally well in spring training, the injury was unfortunate,” Counsell said of Kilian. “As he came back, we’re kind of debating bullpen-starting, helping us with some bullpen needs we had and that didn’t probably go the way we wanted it to go initially. We put him back in the rotation, just to make sure he got out on the mound consistently, and more frankly, and responded really well to that.
“The injury to Jordan, it’s next man up for an opportunity.”
