Trade deadline is not on Jed Hoyer’s mind, but Cubs have to be all over pitching market

CHICAGO — This scenario seemed unimaginable when the Chicago Cubs were not just the hottest team in baseball, but off to a historically great start for a franchise marking its 150th anniversary.

A severe slump over the last month, however, has raised an extremely remote possibility: Could Jed Hoyer become a seller at the trade deadline?

As Chicago’s president of baseball operations, Hoyer is constantly monitoring the market for talent and using the connections he’s made over the past quarter-century in the baseball industry. Even for a seasoned executive, the extreme highs and lows for the 2026 Cubs have been jarring.

Hoyer still believes in the team his group assembled, and those players have almost two full months before the Aug. 3 trade deadline to show that the club is worth further reinvestment. Last year’s 92-win team featured many of the same players, and two separate 10-game winning streaks within the first 40 games of this season provided more proof of concept.

But the Cubs also haven’t won a series in a month, and their recent 6-18 stretch erased most of their margin for error.

“The trade deadline is the furthest thing from my mind right now,” Hoyer said before Friday’s ugly 18-3 loss to the San Francisco Giants at Wrigley Field. “But I think, all along, it’s pretty clear what our needs are going to be. Our position player group is deep, and it’s pretty set. The backbone of the team is our position players. They have to play well for us to be a good team. That’s not going to change at the deadline.

“Obviously, we’ll be looking at pitching at that point. But sitting here talking about the deadline, given how we played, seems like the wrong thing to talk about. We have to play better, and we have to put ourselves in a position to do that. And I think we will.”

For most of the past two months, Hoyer’s front office and Craig Counsell’s coaching staff have been scrambling to find pitching solutions, and that search never really stops.

Matthew Boyd, the Opening Day starter, is nearing the end of his second stint on the injured list, which has left him with only 24 major-league innings pitched so far in his age-35 season.

The Cubs activated Edward Cabrera to start Friday’s game, but the club is working through more than just the blister on his right middle finger. It’s trying to maximize the potential the pitching group saw in pushing for that offseason trade with the Miami Marlins — his ERA ballooned to 4.99 after giving up eight runs in 3 ⅔ innings against the Giants — while trying to minimize his extensive injury history.

At this point, the Cubs do not have a firm return-to-play timeline for Justin Steele, a one-time All-Star who hasn’t pitched in a major-league game since April 7, 2025, due to surgery on his left elbow and a subsequent flexor strain during the rehab process.

The preferred Game 1 starter in a playoff series likely would have been Cade Horton, who underwent major surgery on his right elbow in April, a procedure that could keep him sidelined for up to 16 months.

In the meantime, Jameson Taillon (20) and Shota Imanaga (17) entered Friday ranked first and second among all major-league pitchers in home runs allowed this season.

“Recency affects everybody,” Hoyer said. “We spent the last two, three weeks meeting with Craig (Counsell), meeting with the hitting coaches, talking to players about, ‘Why are we struggling right now?’ Intuitively, you know this group of players is too good to have this last forever, but it’s lasted longer than we all hoped.

“When you’re winning, you sort of let it happen, you sort of let it play out. Sometimes, when you’re winning, it feels like winning kind of finds you. And when you’re losing, you’re a lot busier. You spend a lot more time asking questions, and thinking about processes, and thinking about mental skills.

“You’re trying to be productive — and be a problem solver — and not vent.”

In collecting information, Hoyer does not foresee any blockbuster deals materializing this far from the trade deadline. It will take some time to sort out the buyers, the sellers and the opportunistic executives who will take a hybrid approach.

The American League is so underwhelming at this stage that all 15 clubs are either in a playoff position or within striking distance of a postseason spot. The National League Central is so competitive that all five teams entered this weekend with a winning record.

That deficit in the division (six games heading into Friday night) will be monitored closely. It’s not just that the Cubs are underperforming at an alarming rate. It’s also the Milwaukee Brewers again, winning at such a fast pace.

In calculating the cost to acquire a potential rental player such as Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, or projecting how much someone like New York Mets pitcher Freddy Peralta could change their championship probabilities, the model-driven Cubs would want a clearer picture of where a possible playoff run might start.

While the Cubs expended so much energy and effort to eliminate the San Diego Padres in the wild-card round last year, the Brewers lined up their pitching staff for Chicago’s hitters and held the home-field advantage for a five-game series that saw the home team win each time.

“Your World Series odds are probably going to be correlated to your odds of getting a bye,” Hoyer said. “Getting a bye is such a big deal. It’s effectively not only winning one round but also, by getting a bye, in theory, you’re playing an opponent that should be in a lesser state. The Brewers got a bye last year and Matt Boyd threw on three days’ rest. The bye is that important.

“If you want to look at it differently, I’d say a lot of the aggressiveness is based on the ability to get a bye.”