Could opening the next championship window for the Cubs look more like re-opening the old one by the time they push through a rebuilding process signaled with this week’s trade of Yu Darvish?
If it’s going to be as short-term and modest as newly promoted team president Jed Hoyer suggested he wants, then it might have to involve at least a few high-end pieces from the group of pending free agents on the roster.
“Listen, I think we were pretty clear that we have to do some moves in this direction. You have a window of time with players,” Hoyer said Wednesday in discussing the trade of the Cy Young runner-up to San Diego that was heavy in teenage-prospect return. “We have not been able to extend a lot of these players to extend that window. That’s a fact.”
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Hoyer stopped short of blaming the club’s inability to build on its 2016 potential and remain a World Series favorite on players such as Kris Bryant and Javy Báez rejecting extension offers in recent years.
But he did say he expects to revisit at least some of the talks they’ve had with their remaining core of All-Stars.
And that could be the key to how long and painful this “bridge” or “reset” or “teardown” — whatever you want to call it — becomes. Especially if it involves anything constructive with shortstop Javy Báez, who has one season left before free agency, or catcher Willson Contreras, who has two.
“I don’t think you ever operate in a take-it-or-leave-it mode with guys you’ve been around this much,” said Hoyer when asked about possible extension talks as opposed to low-leverage trades of short-timers — and the potential urgency of such talks.
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“Do I expect we’ll have a lot of conversations? I do,” he said. “Whether those happen in spring training or whether those happen during the course of the season or even after the season, there are certainly players that we have that we would love to keep long term, there’s no question about that.”
The Cubs engaged Báez in talks last winter and into the spring until the pandemic shutdown. They got extensions done with former ERA champ Kyle Hendricks and utility infielder David Bote the year before.
Former MVP Kris Bryant was offered a long-term deal before he reached arbitration but never came close to reaching agreement with the club.
Contreras could be a priority this time around — unless he’s traded. Hoyer called a report that the Cubs were aggressively shopping their only big-league catcher in trade talks “fictional” but also would not describe his chances of being on the Opening Day roster.
“I’m really proud of the offers that we’ve made,” Hoyer said. “I think we’ve been incredibly aggressive with some of these guys, and they’ve made the decision that it wasn’t enough and that they wanted to either wait for a better offer or to test free agency. And that’s 100-percent their right. I begrudge those guys zero percent for making that decision.”
Báez was emotional when he said as the season came to a close that he wants to remain with the Cubs for the rest of his career.
Bryant said when he showed up to training camp after the shutdown that first-time fatherhood and grave world events, including the pandemic, have reshaped how he looks at relationships and business — including openness to an extension. But he still seems like the least likely to extend, especially after a rough 2020 season in which he took another round of criticism from media and fans on social media.
Veteran Anthony Rizzo, whose on-again, off-again leadership reached a peak during the 2020 challenges, is expected to eventually return on an extension after current deal expires in 2021 if only because of both parties strong desire keep him in the clubhouse and lineup.
Any of these players could be moved during the winter for a strong enough offer. And if extensions can’t get done with those who remain, trade talks will be in play again at the trade deadline.
But if players such as Báez walks after 2021, and Contreras heads to the exit right behind him, a tough climb back to the top could suddenly get much steeper and longer.
“We certainly didn’t try to sign these guys to the bottom of the market or anything,” Hoyer said of past efforts. “But we’ll continue to try.
“The only deals we’re going to do are deals that we feel make sense for the long term of the Cubs.”