The end often looks the same.
Without postseason games awaiting them this week, cardboard boxes littered the Chicago Cubs clubhouse as players packed gear and belongings. Hugs and goodbyes were exchanged. An eight-month journey that started in Mesa, Ariz., finished quietly with the Cubs’ 3-0 loss to the Cincinnati Reds in 10 innings Sunday, with 33,792 at Wrigley Field there to witness them again go 83-79 and miss the playoffs.
“I’m here to experience the postseason, we didn’t get there this year so that means that there’s work to do, and I think I’ve said that,” manager Craig Counsell said. “We won 83 games, that wasn’t enough to make the playoffs. That wasn’t enough to give our fans October baseball. That’s what we should be striving to do. That’s what we should do on a consistent basis, in my mind, and that means we got work to do with the offseason starting tomorrow.
“It’s never going to be about one person. I mean, that is my job is to help us win baseball games. So I should be expected to do that, absolutely. We didn’t do it this year.”
Among the most immediate decisions for the Cubs is determining the status of their coaches for 2025, a process that will begin this week, Counsell said.
The Cubs witnessed some positive developments over the last six months, most notably with Pete Crow-Armstrong’s and Miguel Amaya’s offensive turnarounds, stellar rookie seasons from Shota Imanaga and Michael Busch, and Seiya Suzuki showing he is a top-20 hitter in the majors. But none of those encouraging trends helped the Cubs return to the playoffs for the first time in a non-shortened season since 2018. They finished six games out of the last National League wild-card spot and 10 games back of the division-winning Milwaukee Brewers.
“There was so much this year that had a lot of promise and we were rolling, and then there was times where it felt like it was the complete opposite so finding a way to just be our best more consistently is a big thing,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said. “But overall, I mean, it’s tough to, say, ‘Oh, it was a failure because we didn’t get to the playoffs, it was a failure because we didn’t win the World Series.’ Because I’ve always looked at failure as quitting, right? Like, when you quit, when you don’t get back up, that’s what failure is. There’s so much adversity in this game it’s all about how you handle it, and I felt like we handled it really well. We just obviously didn’t win enough games to get to the postseason.”
A roster that felt built to be a high-floor, low-ceiling group needed some things to break its way. A 21-34 stretch from May through June — behind an offense that only the White Sox kept from being the worst in baseball — ultimately was too much to overcome. That remains a befuddling stretch that even the team still isn’t sure what to make of it. The Cubs might have to get creative to upgrade offensive production, though one pathway could come from Cody Bellinger declining his $27.5 million player option for next year, creating both a starting spot and money to pursue options through free agency or trades.
Bellinger reiterated Sunday he remains undecided on his future, though he said he faces a tougher decision with his contract than last year’s mutual option, which he declined.
“It’s extremely frustrating,” Bellinger said of the Cubs’ season. “The frustrating part is the talent’s there, and we were close last year, and then this year we had that dry spell we couldn’t shake out of it. And in this league, it’s hard to come out of that. So, yeah, it’s frustrating because you know the talent potential.”
For as good as the rotation was in 2024 — its 3.77 ERA was tied with the Baltimore Orioles for fifth-lowest in the majors — the pitchers collectively need to become a staff opponents don’t want to face.
“I think we’re doing things well, but what’s our identity? What do we want to be known for?” pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said. “One thing we hammered and preached this year was when teams play us, we want them to know you’re going to attack the strike zone. We want to limit our walks, we dropped our walks this year. We want to be aggressive. We know we’re going to give up some damage at times, but we don’t want people ever thinking we’re afraid of their lineup.”
As the Cubs figure out how to take steps forward in the offseason, Hottovy acknowledged “the elephant in the room, we have to be better (at the) back end of games.” The Cubs finished tied for the eighth-most blown saves (26), 12 of which came in the first two months.
“Whether it’s a mentality, whether it’s taking a deeper look at how we attack in some of those situations, whether it’s personnel, whatever that may be, I think that is definitely one area we want to get better at,” Hottovy said. “To be honest with you, I think we actually get ourselves in trouble sometimes saying, this guy’s going to pitch this, this guy’s going to pitch this, because ideally, in a perfect world and everybody’s healthy and feeling well and pitching well, that’s what we want to do. But that doesn’t always work out that way.
“We really have to trust our eyes. We have to trust what we’re seeing. We have to trust the process we’re going into and we get more in trouble of saying this guy is going to be the guy, and he’s just not there and we beat our head against the wall, waiting for that to happen.”
Part of the puzzle the Cubs must solve is how to best deploy and utilize the young pitchers they have at big-league and Triple-A levels. Ben Brown, Hayden Wesneski and Jordan Wicks all showed they could help the Cubs while Caleb Kilian, who threw five shutout innings in the finale, has flashed potential. Top pitching prospect Cade Horton will open next year one step away from the majors.
The little things add up over the course of the season, and too often the Cubs fell short.
As president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, general manager Carter Hawkins, the front office and Counsell continue to evaluate and dissect the reasons behind what went wrong this year, they cannot afford 2025 to play out like the last two years.
“If I sit here and say that we need to be better,” Counsell said, “then that reflection has to create some changes.”
