Jed Hoyer Grills Yet Another Nothingburger at Postmortem Presser

Even among executives whose primary goal is to reveal as little as possible in public comments, Jed Hoyer is among the best when it comes to using a lot of words to say nothing. That’s not a knock, mind you, as it’s proven to be particularly effective when it comes to various negotiations. With a few exceptions here and there, the Cubs are relatively leak-proof when it comes to their inner workings, whether that’s extension talks or injury designations.

As such, Hoyer’s annual end-of-season press conference rarely provides anything of note. He’s inviting the media to grill him, but all he offers up is nothingburgers over the course of 45 minutes or so. So why am I even bothering to write this up? Well, because the Cubs won’t be playing baseball in any fashion for another four months and the free agency rumors are still weeks away.

The common theme of Hoyer’s responses was that the Cubs have established a firm foundation on which they would like to keep building. They need to keep making good decisions and maintain consistent success with a good, clean brand of baseball that fans can enjoy. Of course, that level of success may need to increase when 92 wins were only good enough for a Wild Card game.

The Cubs were 4-1 in postseason games at Wrigley this season, but went 0-3 in Milwaukee, so they may need to do more than just stacking up dudes who throw 92-93 mph and get outs via contact. With that in mind, let’s look at how Hoyer addressed various topics:

How Cubs can make a deeper postseason run

“The margins are really close in the postseason, and we just have to continue to strengthen our roster in different areas to withstand that.

Extension talks with Kyle Tucker, others

“We’ll be talking to Casey (Close, Tucker’s agent with Excel Sports Management) and we’ll be having those conversations. Like I said a bunch of times during the season, everyone can use a guy like Kyle Tucker. Everyone gets better by having a player like that. We’ll certainly be having those conversations.”

“My hope and expectation is that we’ll have extension talks with a number of our players this offseason. My hope and expectation is that you never find out about it.”

As to the Tucker stuff, I don’t think the Cubs plan on doing anything other than the bare minimum of due diligence. While they may have been hopeful about extending Tucker in the early going, all indications over the last few weeks or months are that the team has zero intention of retaining the right fielder’s services. Could that change? Absolutely, but it seems as though the ship has sailed.

As for anyone finding out about what might otherwise be clandestine extension talks, Hoyer was directly referencing how news about their lowball offer to Pete Crow-Armstrong got out. You have to figure PCA and Cade Horton will be at the top of the list, especially if the latter gets a full year of service time from finishing in the top two for NL Rookie of the Year voting.

To that end, Hoyer confirmed that Horton would have been activated for the NLCS and will be on a normal offseason program.

How the Cubs will replace Tucker when if he leaves

“I think that might be a more specific question than I would answer, but I think that — clearly — Kyle had a huge impact on our offense this year. And so, if he’s not here, that’s a void and we have to figure out how to replace that. But there’s a lot of different ways to do that, so I think that’ll be the focus.

“But yes, I think there’s no question that if you don’t retain a player of that caliber, then you have to replace those wins and that WAR in some other ways. And I think that’s something we’ll be really focused on, but I don’t…I think how you do that, I think can take many different shapes.”

This might get the award for the biggest non-answer, especially since Hoyer straight-up said he wasn’t going to answer it.

Shōta Imanaga‘s contract option(s)

I think when we signed Shōta, if you’d sorta shown us his production over the last two years, we would’ve taken that in a heartbeat. So not only has he produced for us, but he’s a great teammate, terrific asset to the organization. Obviously, we have decisions to make and discussions to make, and over the next 2-3 weeks, we’ll do that. I’ve got nothing but positive things to say about Shōta.”

For more context on the matter, you can check out the piece I published earlier detailing the complexity of Imanaga’s contract and why the Cubs might choose not to exercise their club option.

Budget for 2026

“I’m confident we’re gonna have enough money to field a good team.”

 PCA’s late-season fade

“There could have been some fatigue that set in … I expect him to keep getting better and better.”

On how the postseason crowds at Wrigley made him feel

“I felt like our crowds in the playoffs were unbelievably impressive…It leaves you wanting more…It was pretty intoxicating, just how great Wrigley was during the postseason…It makes you want to work that much harder this winter, it makes you want to get in earlier, makes you want to make that much better decisions.”

That provides a fitting end to this little recap, as I believe it was the most honest response Hoyer provided and it’s also the one with which pretty much everyone can agree. The Cubs need to make better decisions this winter and next season if they hope to push back the date of the 2026 version of this press conference.