The Illusion of Activity and the Winter Meeting Circus
While Jed Hoyer stood before the cameras at the Winter Meetings last month and spewed his usual corporate jargon about ‘real focus’ and ‘energy’ on multiple fronts, the reality of the situation for the Chicago Cubs is far more terrifying than any fan wants to admit because what we are witnessing right now is the slow-motion collapse of a franchise that has forgotten how to win and replaced its soul with a spreadsheet that doesn’t even have the right formulas in the cells anymore. Panic. You can smell it coming off the front office like the stench of rotting hot dogs under the bleachers after a July double-header because they know that the window isn’t just closing; it’s being boarded up with plywood while the rest of the National League Central laughs at the absolute lack of direction coming from Clark and Addison. They talk about Bo Bichette and Alex Bregman as if these players are the second coming of the 2016 core, but in reality, they are looking for expensive life rafts to save a roster that is leaking water from every single pore of its mediocre existence. Disaster.
The obsession with Bo Bichette is perhaps the most glaring sign of a front office that has completely lost its mind since he represents a high-risk, high-cost gamble on a player coming off a disastrous season in Toronto where his metrics plummeted faster than the temperature in Chicago during a polar vortex. Why would a team that claims to be ‘intelligent’ in its spending target a shortstop with a declining defensive profile and a bat that went cold for months on end unless they are so desperate for a ‘name’ to sell season tickets that they’ve abandoned all pretense of actual scouting? It is a joke. If Hoyer thinks Bichette is the missing ingredient, he isn’t just reading the wrong cookbook; he’s trying to bake a cake in a microwave that isn’t even plugged in. We are talking about a player who might demand a king’s ransom in prospect capital—talent that the Cubs’ farm system supposedly has in spades but hasn’t actually translated into major league wins—just to provide a marginal upgrade over what they already have. Failure.
The Bregman Delusion and the Ghost of 2017
Then we have the rumors surrounding Alex Bregman which are even more insulting to the intelligence of the average fan because everyone with a pulse knows that the Houston Astros are only letting him walk because they’ve already squeezed every last drop of elite production out of his aging frame. Bregman is a winner, sure, but he’s a winner who is about to enter the ‘overpaid and underperforming’ phase of his career, and the Cubs are lining up to be the ones who pay for his retirement tour while the fans watch another high-priced veteran struggle to hit a high fastball in the lake breeze. It is the same old story of the Ricketts family pretending to be big spenders by targeting names that were relevant five years ago instead of building a sustainable powerhouse that can actually compete with the Dodgers or the Braves. Pitiful. Every time a rumor surface about Bregman, I don’t see a championship third baseman; I see a massive contract that will sit on the books like an anchor for the next six years, preventing the team from making any real moves while the young talent rots on the bench or gets traded away for more ‘ingredients’ that never seem to make a meal. Lies.
The ‘energy’ Hoyer talked about is nothing more than the frantic vibration of a man who knows his seat is getting hot and that the grace period afforded by the 2016 World Series has finally, mercifully, run out of gas. You cannot build a winning culture on ‘pursuits’ and ‘conversations’ because those don’t show up in the standings and they certainly don’t help you get past the first round of the playoffs, assuming you even make it that far which, let’s be honest, is a massive ‘if’ given the current state of the bullpen and the inconsistent rotation. The Cubs are currently a team built on ‘if’—if the young players develop, if the veterans bounce back, if the trade targets pan out—and ‘if’ is a four-letter word that usually leads to a 78-win season and a lot of empty seats by September. Chaos.
A Franchise Without a Compass
What is the actual plan here because it seems like the plan changes every time a new free agent becomes available or every time a reporter asks a difficult question that Hoyer can’t answer with a pre-planned script about ‘financial flexibility’? They are stuck in a cycle of mediocrity where they are too good to tank but too cheap or too scared to actually go all-in, leaving the fans in a state of perpetual frustration that is becoming the new normal for a franchise that used to be defined by its ‘Loveable Loser’ status but is now just defined by its corporate sterility and lack of ambition. The trade pursuits are a smokescreen designed to keep the fans engaged during the winter months so they keep clicking on links and buying merchandise, but when the dust settles and the season starts, we will likely see a roster that looks remarkably similar to the one that failed to catch the Brewers last year. Fraud.
The implications of failing to land a big fish this winter are catastrophic because the fan base is on the verge of a full-scale revolt after years of being told to ‘wait for the next wave’ of prospects that never seems to arrive with the promised impact. If the Cubs don’t land Bichette or Bregman, and instead settle for a couple of mid-tier veterans on one-year ‘prove-it’ deals, it will be the ultimate admission that this front office is out of ideas and out of time. We are looking at a potential decade of irrelevance where the Cubs become a regional curiosity rather than a national powerhouse, all because the people in charge are more interested in winning the press conference than winning the division. It is a betrayal of the city and the history of the club. Betrayal.
The history of the Cubs is littered with periods of gross mismanagement, but this feels different because it is being done under the guise of ‘modern baseball management’ and data-driven decision-making that seems to ignore the human element of the game. You can’t quantify ‘focus’ and ‘energy’ on a spreadsheet, and you certainly can’t use it to strike out a hitter in the ninth inning with the bases loaded. The Cubs are currently a rudderless ship in a stormy sea, and the captain is busy telling everyone how great the engine room looks while the water is up to our knees. We are heading for a disaster of epic proportions, and the only question left is how many fans will still be on board when the ship finally hits the bottom of the lake. End.
