Jed Hoyer's TED Talk on "The consolidation of WAR"

And the Cubs podcast returns to talk about all the trades

Today’s newsletter is a two-fer! A podcast release and a full column.

Before we get to the takedown of Jed Hoyer’s press conference to announce the Kyle Tucker trade, Oleg and Praz returned for the Cubs podcast to talk about the very same thing, plus the first all-Cody trade in MLB history, dumping Matt Thaisssss off on the White Sox and the signing of aggressively average Carson Kelly to catch.

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Jed meets the media to gloat

A few days after making a good trade and a few minutes before making another shit one, Cubs president of hoarding the Garbage Family’s money, Jed Hoyer met the Cubs press corps to talk about Kyle Tucker.

More disturbing than any of his answers was a sound he made right at the end of the session when he was asked whether the Cubs sent presentation materials to Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki.

What the fuck is this?

Is that Jed’s actual laugh, or did Jed just really botch a Muttley impression?

Good lord, man. Go to a doctor and get that taken care of.

Anyway, before he tried to top the “many of us have herpes” drop to end our podcasts, Jed did talk about his new right fielder.

That was the kind of player that we felt like we were lacking.

What? A good one?

You guys (the media) asked me a lot of questions about our roster and how it was constructed, We have a lot of really good players.

Where? Are you still with the Cubs? Did I miss an announcement? Did you join Farhan Zaidi on the failed GMs club with the Dodgers?

We lacked that consolidation of WAR on our team in one player.

From a cooler GM, “consolidation of WAR” would sound awesome.

Tucker’s one of the best players in baseball. To get a player like that it comes at a price. But it’s a price we were willing to play.

I give Jed credit. This was a big boy move, and it’s about time he actually made it. But he did, and the Cubs are much better for it.

Then he was asked, “How does where you are in your championship window play into what you are willing to give up.”

Championship window? I’m not even sure they’re in a championship dryer vent, much less a window.

We talked all winter about how there were just a finite number of ways we could improve as a team, especially on the position player side…

Why is that? Because your president of baseball operations kept handing out no-trade clauses to average players? Nah, that can’t be it.

In order to get a player better than our internal replacement level, you have to go pretty high.

Jed, you could pick one up in a Home Depot parking lot.

We have a lot of good players. We are fairly balanced. There just weren’t that many players out there that were available that we were like, ‘OK, this clearly makes us a better team.’

You won EIGHTY-THREE games, TWO years in a row. Yeah, sure, your roster is just loaded with studs.

That player needs to provide something we don’t have.

Functional baseball talent?

And then our buddy Jon Greenberg got to the real question. Do the Cubs plan to pay what it will take to keep Kyle Tucker more than just this one season?

Part of the question included, “What’s the kind of calculus to give up someone of Cam Smith’s upside for a guy who could bolt after a year?”

I don’t think they taught anything higher than Algebra II at Wesleyan. Rich kids don’t math.

We have him under control for one year. I don’t know what the future holds.

Presumably you know whether or not you’ll be able to offer him a nine figure contract that starts with a four, though, right?

Chicago sells itself really well.

I get the feeling it’s going to have to.

I’m excited to bring him in for this year and see where this goes.

To the Mets, probably.

Clearly, this is the kind of player that we lacked. There’s a real goal to be a better team in 2025 than we were in 23 and 24.

Dare to dream! Could you rise all the way up to fourth best record in the NL in the second half this year?

Then Jon said, “Chicago’s great. But money is good, too. Do you guys think are going to have the resources to make him a competitive offer?”

Yeah. (pause) I think that’s something we’ll discuss in the future. There’s no point in discussing that here in December.

Well, Kyle. Rent. Don’t buy.

Jesse Rogers asked Jed about whether the Cubs could keep Cody Bellinger, Seiya Suzuki and Michael Busch and find a way to play all of them. By the time this press conference happened, Jed surely knew he was about to trade Bellinger to the Yankees for a failed 30-year old pitching prospect and send over five million bucks for the opportunity to not risk having to pay his second best player to actually play baseball for him.

I’m not going to speculate on the availability of any player.

The best ability is availability to have a contract to dump.

Jed was asked what the organization’s comfort level with Michael Busch playing third base and Jed vomited at the thought.

Sahadev said, “How much of a factor in this move was that’s it’s been a while since you haven’t made the playoffs?”

It hasn’t been long since they haven’t made the playoffs. That’s kind of the problem.

Sahadev asked if Jed has talked with the Ricketts about an extension. Given how they, like the Bears, love to give out secret extensions to their GMs and coaches/managers it was an excellent question.

“I wouldn’t talk about that.”

Then there was the awkward sound of Carter Hawkins measuring the blinds in Jed’s office right behind him.

Bruce Levine asked Hoyer about the “feel good” nature for the organization of making their biggest trade, “since ‘17 or ‘18.” But that’s wrong. I guess it’s the biggest trade since the one for Aroldis Chapman in 2016, but it’s the biggest position player trade since Derrek Lee in the winter of 2004.

Jed said they are having organizational meetings and he took time to thank the scouts for making it possible because the key components in the deal going to Houston were a player acquired in a trade when he was a minor leaguer (Hayden Wesneski), a player acquired in a big league trade (Isaac Paredes) and a draft pick (Cam Smith.) It’s a nice gesture. It’d be even nicer if a bunch of the people who scouted those players didn’t get fired and not replaced two months ago.

Bruce also asked about whether this means Matt Shaw will take over third base, and Jed answered by saying that he wasn’t going to “gift him that job on a conference call in mid-December.” But then when asked about going out to get a veteran to play third, Jed didn’t sound like he was going to do that. He did say they needed to continue to improve their bench, but somewhere Miles Mastrobuoni was oiling up his glove, just in case.

Somebody asked him about signing Carson Kelly and Jed said what mainly attracted them to him was his defense. Which makes sense, because he can’t hit for shit. Jed particularly raved about Kelly’s throwing, which, given baseball’s rules changes to make stealing bases super easy probably doesn’t really matter. How much you almost throw a guy out doesn’t seem all that relevant.

Sahadev asked Jed directly if the Cubs traded for Paredes thinking they could trade him because he had so many years of control left, and Jed actually said something interesting. The Cubs traded for Isaac on July 28 and in the three days after that before the deadline “a number” of teams called Jed trying to trade for him, including the Astros. I’m sure most of the calls went, “What do you need him for, you’re not going to the playoffs. Give him to me!”

Hoyer talked about how Tucker is a complete player who does everything well.

He’s right. The Cubs haven’t had a player this good since Kris Bryant crashed into the first base bag in Cincinnati. Tucker kind of is a left handed Bryant. He hits for power, he hits for average, he plays excellent defense, he runs the bases well. Maybe Jed can trade him in July for two players who will never amount to anything, too.

On a team that has a bunch of players projected roughly the same, he provides something we simply didn’t have on our team last year. All the teams that made the playoffs last year had some version of this. There are players on our team that could provide this. But certainly, this is a player who projects to be at that level going into the season. It was something we didn’t have on our roster.

First off, no, there weren’t players on the team that could provide that. Which is why he had to finish the thought with, “it was something we didn’t have on our roster.”

The reporters weren’t done asking Jed about signing Tucker to an extension, and they got him to at least try to answer the question.

Of course, you want players like Kyle Tucker for a long time, he’s at such an elite level in our game. Are you ever going to know if we’re having extension talks? No.

I think we will know. That it’s no.

I wouldn’t comment on it, when you acquire a player like that, you want to have that player for a long time. We’ll have contact with his agents. You want good players for a long time.

Said moments before he traded Cody Bellinger for nothing.

And then he made the sound that will haunt our nightmares.

The highlight of the Kyle Tucker press conference was when the Cubs PR guy interrupted to ask Kyle to tilt his camera down.

It was like this:

He tilted it down, the guy said, “that’s perfect” and it ended up like this:

Ahh yes. So, so much better. “Perfect.”