CHICAGO – Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer spent much of his morning on Friday going through exit meetings with players at Wrigley Field. There were also conversations with coaches and staff, and parting words as those not based in Chicago prepared for travels home.
This is not what Hoyer wanted to be doing on Friday. This was a day that was supposed to be used for a workout ahead of the National League Division Series. So when the leader of the Cubs’ front office sat down with reporters in the afternoon, there was one prevailing thought coursing through his mind.
“Disappointment,” Hoyer said. “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. Losses like this are really motivating. But in the moment, right now, I feel for the fans who supported this team so much. I feel like they deserved a long run this year. We let it slip away.”
The Cubs let their grasp on the NL Central slip away in May and watched the Brewers roll to a 103-win season and a fourth division title. They let a substantial lead atop the NL Wild Card standings in mid-August slip away over the season’s final weeks. They let home-field advantage slip away for the playoffs, giving the Padres an edge in their first-round sweep of Chicago.
So now, Hoyer and his front-office team are left to sift through it all to figure out how to avoid a similar fade in ‘27 and future seasons. The Cubs had baseball’s highest-scoring offense. They boasted a defense that set single-season Statcast records. They had the presumptive NL MVP in center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong.
“We believed in this group,” Hoyer said. “We had the best player in baseball. We had an exceptional position-playing group. So, we believed in this group. And we fell short. We let that opportunity slip away. That’s the part that will gnaw at us for a long time.”
That leads to the obvious question: where will Hoyer start this offseason?
Hoyer said the top priority in the coming months will be to “look at every aspect of the chain” within the Cubs’ pitching infrastructure. Injuries throughout the rotation and bullpen impacted Chicago’s pitching plans in 2026, but that alone does not explain how far the staff lagged behind the results coming from the lineup and defense.
The Cubs allowed the most home runs (231) in the NL this season, and the bullpen’s issues can be summed up by the club-record 14 players who recorded at least one save. Hoyer shouldered the blame for how the relief corps was built (“I did a poor job on the bullpen this year – full stop.”) and said fixes to the staff as a whole needs to include an organization-wide autopsy.
“Scouting, playing development, Major League development, Major League acquisitions,” Hoyer said. “Overall, the overall quality of the pitching has to improve. That’s really the thing that, when I think about our offseason, when I think about seasons to come, that has to be the goal, is to get our pitching infrastructure and pitching quality to the level of our position-player group.”
Hoyer was not ready to say whether that might include changes within the group of coaches and staff who lead the Cubs’ pitching group.
“We haven’t had a chance to really sit down and meet since the season ended,” Hoyer said. “But yeah, thinking about messaging, thinking about the different areas we focus on, I think all of those are fair questions, and we have to address those things. But I’m not going to comment on staffing at this point.”
The Cubs are also facing the reality that the team’s list of free agents is considerable.
Shota Imanaga, Kevin Gausman and David Peterson will hit the open market this offseason. Pitchers with options for ‘27 that could follow include Matthew Boyd (mutual), Clay Holmes (player) and Colin Rea (club), along with a group of relievers.
Internally, the Cubs will have Ben Brown, Cade Horton and Justin Steele coming back from injuries that cost them some or all of ‘26. That adds another layer of complication for Hoyer’s group as they start to assess the roster for next season, and what external additions might help improve the staff.
“It does present a bit of a team-building challenge,” Hoyer said. “All three guys have a real chance to impact us next year, but how much is a real question. And we have to kind of build accordingly.”
That process starts now for Hoyer, who did not expect to have the full month of October to begin thinking about how to attack the next Cubs offseason.
“The expectations have been raised here,” he said. “When we got here, making the postseason was really celebrated. Making it twice in a row just didn’t happen. And so, I’m proud of the fact that over 15 years we’ve changed the entire expectations of what it is to be with the Cubs.
“We should always be thinking about changes and improvements. For me personally, I have to be better next year than I was this year.”