3 Chicago Cubs takeaways from Jed Hoyer’s end-of-season news conference, including his ‘poor job’ building pen

Thirty-seven hours after the Chicago Cubs season ended unceremoniously with a wild-card-round sweep in San Diego, president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer tried to put the year in context Friday afternoon.

With exit interviews with players and coaches underway Friday, there was one overriding sentiment: disappointment.

“The season was unlike any season I’ve been through in 25 years,” Hoyer said. “There was a number of times I think things felt incredibly dire during the season. We had a mid-April stretch where it felt like every reliever was hurt. Now we had a late-June stretch where we were scrambling to fill out a rotation in any way. We survived those things incredibly well. We also had periods of the year, long periods, where I thought we looked like maybe the best team in baseball.

“These fans deserve home playoff games. We let home field slip away by playing poorly in September, especially the last week and then we let a chance to go deep in the playoffs and really get this team playing in the postseason.”

The Cubs return most of their strong position-player core for 2027, with impending free agents Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki being the notable exceptions. They have work to do, though, to better this roster, which Hoyer acknowledged among the three key takeaways from his end-of-season news conference.

1. The bullpen must improve through internal and external options.

The Cubs built a bullpen in 2025 that proved pivotal in their run to the playoffs and during a postseason stretch that took them to the brink of the National League Championship Series.

The 2026 pen became a much different story. The Cubs’ top offseason reliever acquisitions missed most of the season. Hunter Harvey made just four appearances before going on the injured list in early April and never coming back, while Phil Maton went on the IL three times with a reoccurring knee issue that turned into a partial patellar tendon tear and season-ending debridement surgery. The two veterans combined for a 6.25 ERA and minus-0.6 fWAR in 35 appearances.

“I did a poor job in the bullpen this year — full stop,” Hoyer said. “So I take responsibility for that and something that we’ll look to improve on this offseason because it didn’t work out as well as it did in ‘25 this last year.”

Maton remains under contract for next year, joining a returning group of Ryan Zeferjahn, Daniel Palencia, Ryan Rolison and Jacob Webb — if they pick up his $2.5 million club option. It’s a solid starting point, but the Cubs need more out of their relievers in 2027.

“We sort of built the (2026) bullpen with the same philosophy with the same thoughts in mind (as 2025), and we didn’t get it right, and that’s something that we’ve spent a lot of time talking about already and we’ll continue to talk about,” Hoyer said. “The overall quality of the pitching has to improve, and 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.”

If the Cubs aren’t going to spend money on relievers in free agency, something Hoyer has been philosophically opposed to doing in the past, they must do a better job of developing relievers within the organization, which it has struggled to produce with reliability, particularly when it comes to high-leverage arms. This won’t be an easy puzzle to solve, complicating an area that must improve.

2. Rotation needs more swing-and-miss

The Cubs enter the offseason with abundant questions surrounding the rotation.

Their three in-season trade acquisitions — Clay Holmes, David Peterson and Kevin Gausman — will be free agents. And with Shota Imanaga entering free agency, Matthew Boyd potentially hitting the FA market, too, if either side doesn’t pick up his $15 million mutual option, plus a trio of starters — Ben Brown, Cade Horton and Justin Steele — coming off injuries that cast uncertainty of how much they can be relied on in 2027, the Cubs have a lot of work to do.

“We gave up far too many home runs this year, and whether that’s a stuff issue, a fly-ball-tendency issue, all those things I think are fair things to look at,” Hoyer said. “I think I said hundreds of times during the course of the year, we can’t catch homers.”

“It’s having the humility to look at every aspect of the chain from scouting, player development, major-league development, major-league acquisitions, all those things. Ultimately that’s my responsibility.”

Edward Cabrera’s disappointing season also complicates how the Cubs attack the rotation. Blister issues and an underwhelming performance, featuring a 5.96 ERA in 18 games (15 starts), wasn’t what the Cubs expected when they traded for Cabrera before the season. Hoyer said he and the organization need to own that they didn’t get the most out of the 28-year-old.

“We have to think a lot about what things contributed to him struggling and we have to look at ourselves and look at what did we not do to get the most out of him,” Hoyer said. “He did struggle a lot with these blister issues, and how much that impacted those different spin pitches is is unclear, but he’s super talented. He has the swing-and-miss stuff that we’re looking for.”

3. Looming lockout could have Cubs being more aggressive in November

Nobody knows what roster-building parameters will exist in the next collective bargaining agreement, with the current iteration expiring at the beginning of December.

The Cubs, prior to the last CBA expiration and subsequent lockout before the 2022 season, completed a final-hour deal to sign starter Marcus Stroman to a multiyear contract. Hoyer anticipates that period in November in the lead-up to an expected owners lockout to be active, adding that deals will get done if they make sense. Given their rotation needs, it would make sense if the Cubs looked into re-signing someone such as Holmes, Peterson or Gausman before the lockout if the other side is willing.

“Last time there was sort of a sprint in the moments before and then there was like a sprint in the moments after (the lockout), and that may be a blueprint for how this goes again,” Hoyer said. “We’re going to have likely an empty period in there, but yeah, I think there will be activity in November for sure.

“We’re going to have to be creative. We’re going to have to fill a number of holes. I don’t think the timing affects that. I think that can get done. We have to make good decisions and we have to find deals that make sense for both sides.”