Not unlike with Craig Counsell, I recognize that there are only so many things Chicago Cubs President Jed Hoyer can say these days. He bears considerably more responsibility for the performance of his roster, of course, but once it’s all put together (and torn asunder, from time to time), the reality is that it’s mostly on the assembled players to just play. Sure, Hoyer can play at the margins of the roster this time of year (and has been doing so aggressively), but wholesale changes generally wait for the offseason, while singular impact moves tend to happen around the Trade Deadline.
But again, this is the guy who is ultimately accountable for the big league roster and the organization’s health overall, both of which currently have some big plusses and minuses right now. I am glad, therefore, to hear Hoyer make himself available to speak, even if he can’t magically fix things in mid-June with a snappy answer.
To that end, you can see 24 minutes of Hoyer’s media availability embedded at the bottom of this post via Marquee. Some of the most notable items and my thoughts as I watched:
On Alex Bregman’s arrival and early struggles: “He’s a really good player with an amazing track record. He’s had periods of struggle in his career before …. I don’t think he’s happy with his first two and a half months as a Cub. I think he’d say it’s been frustrating. That’s also part of baseball, and I can promise you no one’s taking more swings or watching more video to figure out why than he is. His batting average and on-base numbers are okay, but the isolated power and the production with runners in scoring position haven’t been there, and he’s working hard to get there.” Hoyer does not sound eager to see any kind of permanent changes in the position player group, in terms of who sits and who starts: “On the position player side, I think we have a lot of good athletes and good bats, and that depth is valuable. If there are times we can use those young players, that’s great. But the sample’s still small, and even within this year those guys have had positive stretches. Hopefully they work through it, and the best-case scenario is our best lineup hitting while we keep playing good defense.” On Dansby Swanson, specifically, Hoyer talked about the value of run prevention, generally: “Obviously Dansby has struggled. He’s gotten some days off, and he’s working hard to improve …. Our run prevention is probably the backbone of this team, and we’ve had this conversation when Pete was struggling, when Nico was struggling – which he is right now – and about Dansby. We prevent runs really well …. So I don’t think you can forget about that when we struggle a bit offensively. All that said, we have a number of guys struggling right now, and they’re all working hard to get out of it. My guess is by the end of the year their numbers will look like they usually do. But as a team, we need to score more runs, and especially we need to hit in leverage situations. That hasn’t happened. To answer your question directly: we can’t just run away from our run prevention when we’re struggling offensively.” I’m not sure that actually answers anything directly, if we’re talking semantics. The indirect answer, though, seems to be that Swanson will continue to have a great deal of leeway at the plate because his glove is so important. Of course, that conversation might be entirely different if Nico Hoerner wasn’t also slumping so badly at the plate, and the possibility of moving him to shortstop to get Matt Shaw and Pedro Ramirez in at second base more often was looking attractive. But right now, all you’d be doing is downgrading the glove at shortstop (probably) and at second base (probably), in exchange for maybe a slight bump in offense at only one of those positions. You do still have to consider it at some point; I’m just saying it doesn’t right now look as compelling as it might otherwise. That’s my editorializing, mind you, not Hoyer’s. Speaking of Hoerner, Hoyer seemed to suggest that his slump hurts the Cubs in a unique way, since so much of his production is built on batting average. That helps balance the offense out, but right now, it’s lacking. So that stings (both in terms of the lost production, and in terms of the variability of the types of production). Hoyer pointed to the “sequencing” of offense, as he often does, which is another way to talk about runners in scoring position. The Cubs are getting hits, but just not in a sequence that maximizes runs. Typically, that evens out over a full season, as we’ve discussed, but not always. Mostly you rely on the talent to revert to the mean over a large enough sample, but the one caveat Hoyer carved out: the psychological component, i.e., if guys start pressing. When he was asked whether the Cubs are seeing that happen, Hoyer suggested that they look at all possible explanations when the numbers diverge as much as they have, but kinda punted on anything definitive. (Which is to say, he didn’t rule it out.) More from Hoyer on the offensive struggles of late: “We’ve, for better or worse, spent five weeks having that exact discussion: are guys doing too much, too little, do they need to approach things differently? Those are all conversations you go through. It is nice with this group that it’s never ‘too little’ – this is such a diligent group, they work so hard. There are times you wonder if it’s overly serious, if guys are doing too much. We’ve asked all those questions. The hard part is you’re talking about 13 different position players This isn’t really a holistic thing, it’s a collection of individual guys. Sometimes they all hit at once and the offense looks incredible, and sometimes they don’t. Unfortunately it’s not as much of a collective as you’d wish. What works for one struggling player might not work for another, and that’s the challenge …. Lacking any hard data, my own observation is that at times it looks like guys are a little confused up there at the plate. That’s just my read; you might not agree.” I do agree.The full appearance:
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