It was one of the most important decisions for the Chicago Cubs organization in years, and it came as one of the first moves of his term as President of Baseball Operations. So, yes, Jed Hoyer would have to talk about the trade of Yu Darvish and Victor Caratini.
Marquee is carrying the presser, and I will be watching and updating this post live below.
We will be taking Jed Hoyer’s LIVE press conference at 10am
Watch: https://t.co/m4zyZiPAWm pic.twitter.com/Qc8WgJP17r
– Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) December 30, 2020
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The broadcast has started, but Hoyer has not yet started. Cole Wright is admirably filling the time alone, talking about the trade.
Note: the “we” and “selves” are me to paraphrase Hoyer’s comments.
Hoyer asked about what this trade represents in terms of direction and future for the Cubs. What should fans expect? Hoyer mentions the agricultural system that dates back to 2015 and how it helped them to be “as aggressive as possible with the prospects, with money”. Hoyer believes that the Cubs did some good things in 2018-20, but given the investment in trading prospects and financial investments, it was time to take a look at the future.
Hoyer says that as a big market team, we don’t have extra draft choices like other teams in the division, and when you get close to the end of a window, you have to make moves towards the future. I think we will have a competitive team in 2021 – praise for Davies – but after six years with every move focused on the present, it was time to make some moves focused on the future.
The goal is to build a future as bright as the past six years, and that will mean trying to attract more potential customers.
We are excited about the comeback – four really talented young players, hard to acquire that kind of depth in any deal. The future will tell us whether it was a good return or not. Judging now is a kind of silly mission, says Hoyer. In my career, the businesses in which we have been universally praised are generally transactions that end up being the worst. Often, negotiations in which the reaction was really negative worked better. At the moment, it may not be that popular, and that’s just the job.
With regard to finance, that was not the focus of trade. In this environment, yes, there is an eye on finance – it is a business, and some of these things are expanded because of 2020. But that was not the focus of the business. The goal was to move a player in the second half of the contract and acquire many young talent. We haven’t had a chance to do much in the past six years.
Our job is to be honest and transparent, but there are competitive advantages to keeping some of our plans a secret. I thought we were very clear, however, that we had to make some moves in that direction. We were not able to extend our people in this particular window with this specific group of players, so we are coming to an end of that. There are many examples of teams that performed a small reset – Yankees, Red Sox – and were very successful. Examples of Tigers, Phillies, Giants where they didn’t really do a reset. We think the first group is the group we would like to be in terms of what the post-execution transition of the window was like.
We got a lot more talent by being younger in the commercial return, and the teams became even more aggressive when clinging to older / established types. Potential ages don’t really define a window, by the way, it’s just about putting talent in the system.
Assessing potential customers this year was really difficult. We tried to explore the instructional league really heavily, including these four guys (and Caissie in the draft), as well as the international history of the other three. This can lead to more information asymmetry than normal, but it can work both ways.
I feel good about our capture situation now, although Miguel Amaya is not an option to open the season. We will be looking for someone to replace Caratini.
Priests strongly insisted that Caratini be in business because of how he can help with the transition to Darvish. He’s one of the favorites for us, and I still remember negotiating Russell and Bonifacio on the contract with a deadline to get Victor Caratini back in 2014. It may have been the last negotiation we did in that direction.
Hoyer says people called all the players on the squad, but yesterday’s report – I’m buying Contreras aggressively or whatever – is fictional. Contreras is one of the best catchers in baseball, and we’ve had him for two more years.
We are in the free agent market – it has been slow – but we know about the gaps in our list. We’re talking to agents, etc., but it’s been slow so far. (Interesting answer, because the question was specifically about whether they have new flexibility. It was a more general answer.)
Asked about layoffs and impact on scouting: Due to changes in scouting, we had to focus on some organizations more than others. It has to be more efficient with fewer employees, but we were able to fully explore the organizations that we thought could be transaction-oriented.
Our player development and high-performance configuration are so strong now, that I am very excited to acquire these types of prospects to join this system. The value can be derived from them by reaching the big ones and contributing, or by developing well and being used in other negotiations. A healthy organization has a lot of depth in the agricultural system so that it can make an impact and also negotiate for an impact.
It is not the case now, as in 2012, that we simply did not have the structure of a competitive team. We have these bones now, so we are not going to follow the same manual that we did back then. In addition, this manual has been copied so many times that it doesn’t work as well now. (That is, without stripped reconstruction.)
I believe that we will compete in this category in 2021 (heh, the category sucks), but we will not hide that we are looking to the future. There are contractual realities with this group. We were unable to make extensions that we thought were the right value, so we have to keep that in mind as we go along.
The Little Lions have been very successful with control and command pitchers, so we think Davies will thrive with us. But it’s a fair question that if you have three types like that (Davies, Hendricks, Mills), you’re giving teams a very similar look. We have to make sure that we are giving the guys different looks.
There are still so many unknowns about 2021, and it is the backdrop for all these free agent moves and hires and each team is in the same boat. We are in the middle of a pandemic, so if you have to deal with some uncertainties, this is how it works.
GM search: we’ve been very busy now and we have a great team now, so in the end, I decided to wait to hire a GM. I will definitely hire someone from outside, but the more I think about what I need, the process, etc., although I cannot reproduce the relationship I had with Theo, I think it is important for me to spend more time with the person we could hire. Multiple meetings, meetings with families, etc. It is a unique relationship, and it should be. So, because of the moment and because of the pandemic, I will wait until I feel that I have a chance to do the process as I feel I need to. Also, a good team around me now.