It’s a dangerous game to worry too much about “winning the offseason” in any case, because we’ve seen countless examples of big, splashy offseasons yielding little more than disappointment when the actual regular season bell rings. Sometimes, the best moves are unheralded at the time they are made, or are the moves you didn’t make in the first place.
That said, offseason moves exist for a reason. Teams DO them for a reason. You want to, you know, make your team better. So I think there is still an allowance for evaluating offseason performance by an organization, regardless of what label you give it. I don’t much care about the Cubs “winning the offseason,” but I care deeply about them improving upon a team that has the bones of a playoff contender but had clear needs entering the offseason.
Have the Cubs already made those improvements? Have they already “won the offseason”?
I wouldn’t say that myself, but in his latest round-up at ESPN, Jeff Passan rather surprisingly includes the Cubs together with the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, Diamondbacks, and Red Sox as “winning the offseason” so far:
“Considering the Cubs are currently $50 million or so under the first luxury-tax threshold and they’ve spent the winter spending more like the Chicago White Sox, it’s stunning that they’re in the winners’ category. Such is the power of the superstar trade. The baseball-watching public doesn’t fully recognize how good Kyle Tucker is because he has been surrounded by so much talent in Houston, but he is precisely the caliber of player the Cubs needed as they try to wrangle the NL Central from Milwaukee and keep Cincinnati and Pittsburgh at bay.
The rest of the Cubs’ winter has been whatever. Tucker is the anti-whatever. And while the Cubs did pay heavily with Isaac Paredes and Cam Smith — just ask the Yankees about the dangers of giving up significant talent for one year of an impending free agent outfielder — it was well worth it.”
I don’t know. While I am very much on board with the Kyle Tucker trade and expect it to pay dividends for the Cubs in 2025, it’s hard for me to say that alone means they are sufficiently ripe to be included with teams that have made multiple significant additions.
Even when you consider the other moves the Cubs have made – signing catcher Carson Kelly, signing lefty Matthew Boyd, signing lefty Caleb Thielbar, trading for Eli Morgan, swapping Cody Bellinger for Cody Poteet, and other smaller moves – it’s hard for me to say that the Cubs have improved themselves WAY disproportionately to most of the rest of the league. Improved the team with that series of moves? Yes. Massive improvement such that you’d say they “won the offseason”? Or even checked all the necessary boxes? Not yet.
The Cubs, mind you, could and should get some internal improvements in 2025, which, together with the offseason so far, could make them an 87/88-win team. But a real offseason victory, to me, would include the Cubs also adding another starting pitcher, a truly impactful later-inning reliever, and at least one high-quality bench player. That’s the shape of a realistic and successful offseason for this Cubs team, which would have me calling it a “win.” I wouldn’t even really care about it relative to the rest of the league – i.e., the Cubs “winning the offseason” compared to other teams. I would just care about it being the Cubs making the clear moves they needed to make to put the 2025 team in the best position to win real games.
That is all to say, while I appreciate Passan’s comments on the Tucker trade, and agree with him broadly, I will continue reserve judgement on the entirety of the Cubs’ offseason until I see the final accounting.
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