On a trade deadline day that called for action, the Cubs hugged their prospects tight

New York Times

4 days ago

CHICAGO — If you were looking for a blockbuster trade deadline, you came to the wrong city.
Try San Diego or Houston.
On Thursday, the Cubs played it safe, while the White Sox tried to muster some enthusiasm about another season of Luis Robert Jr. Meanwhile, Chicago just collectively shook its head and asked when the Bears' first preseason game is.
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All that time spent coming up with fake trades was wasted.
It's fair to say the best addition by either team at the deadline was when Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer swung a deal for 'super-utilityman' Willi Castro.
The White Sox, who have used a hot streak to vault from the second-worst record in baseball to the second-worst record in baseball, made just two deals in the last two days.
The Cubs made a handful of moves but didn't address their most obvious need: starting pitching.
Sox general manager Chris Getz's only real trade chip was rental starting pitcher Adrian Houser. While he apparently had conversations with his friend Hoyer about another crosstown deal, it didn't happen.
The Cubs and Sox almost had a trade for Adrian Hauser. ' We worked really hard but didn't quite get there.'Hoyer told me. Getz confirmed that they had conversations up to 30 min before the deadline.Getz said he thought they were close for the prospects they asked for.
— Bruce Levine (@MLBBruceLevine) August 1, 2025
Once I saw that Getz traded Houser to the savvy Tampa Bay Rays, I figured he probably lost the deal.
In return for Houser, Getz got a former top prospect in Curtis Mead and two Triple-A relievers. The Charlotte Knights improved with this deal, but I'm not so sure about the White Sox. The easy comparison, and one Getz himself made, was to his deadline deal last year when he picked up Miguel Vargas from the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Vargas looked like he had never previously hit a baseball last season. This season, he is only slightly below average offensively, which is a massive improvement. Another year, another project. (Getz also got a minor-league pitcher from the Yankees for outfielder Austin Slater.)
The big news on Thursday was that Getz couldn't swing a trade of Robert, his former All-Star. It wasn't that big of a surprise considering how Robert has played for most of the season. Though he has heated up lately, no smart GM would trade top prospects for such an unsure thing. Unfortunately for Getz, most of the dumb ones aren't running teams in playoff contention.
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In the wake of this failure, Getz tried to express his utmost faith in Robert, who has been unreliable and unproductive for the past two seasons.
'It starts with Luis and how we feel about him,' he said. 'You look at what he's done in the last month or so and he's impacting the game in so many different ways, which speaks to the talent he has. We believe in Luis Robert.'
We believe in Luis Robert … until next season, when we try desperately to trade him again. First, they have to pick up his $20 million option, which might give Jerry Reinsdorf some agita, but it's a bet they have to make.
OK, that's enough White Sox.
The Cubs were the team with the most to gain this week and their results are mixed at best. At worst, this was a failure. If we can meet in the middle, it was a missed opportunity.
Hoyer got swingman Michael Soroka on Wednesday and added relievers Andrew Kittredge and Taylor Rogers on Thursday. And if they weren't going to swing for the fences with Eugenio Suárez, Castro was a perfect addition for their needs. He can play multiple positions in the infield and outfield. He's the kind of guy that playoff teams get at the deadline.
As for the pitchers, well, we'll see. Relievers are a volatile bunch. I trust the Cubs' pitching department, but none of these guys are Mason Miller or Jhoan Duran. And aside from Soroka, who will probably be slotted into the bullpen down the stretch, they aren't starters.
Early Thursday evening, Hoyer walked into a second-floor conference room where the media was holed up to address his trade deadline moves and lack thereof. He wasn't thrilled to see a news conference setup. If he landed a top starter, he would've done cartwheels to the backdrop and lectern.
Instead, Hoyer had to address his missed opportunity to find a starter for a beleaguered rotation. Sure, Jameson Taillon and Javier Assad could be close to returning from their injury rehabs. But this is a team that desperately needed a proven starter not only for October, but also to help hold off the Brewers, who are currently in first place in the NL Central.
'The goal is to be good every year … the goal is not to have massive up-and-down cycles.' – Jed Hoyer pic.twitter.com/aznUyi6A6Q
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) August 1, 2025
Like a lot of baseball execs did Thursday, Hoyer noted the bold-faced names, the starting pitchers with years of control left, weren't traded at all. The teams that kept them wanted the farm in return, so to speak, and Hoyer drew a line in the dirt.
'I think that we obviously worked hard on some guys that I feel like could provide significant impact,' he said. 'In the end, the asking price on those guys would have been so detrimental to our future that we've obviously decided against it.'
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You might call it prospect-hugging, Hoyer calls it responsible stewardship for a franchise he'll be running for the foreseeable future. His contract extension was announced Monday. All that talk about timing to help him at the trade deadline was just more wasted breath.
Going into a lame-duck season, Hoyer made a win-now move in the winter when he traded his 2024 top pick, Cam Smith, to Houston for one year of Kyle Tucker. On one hand, it has worked out for both teams. Smith went from prospect to starter for the Astros, and Tucker was looking like an MVP until the last month. But if the Cubs don't do anything this postseason and Tucker walks, it will no longer be looked at as such a win-win deal.
That's why the conventional wisdom was that Hoyer would take a couple more big swings at the deadline to try to improve his odds.
Now, if Hoyer had to deal multiple top prospects for starters with years of control, and if teams were really asking for Matt Shaw and Cade Horton, you can see why that's a nonstarter for him.
'Whether it's in this offseason or in the past, I think, certainly we've moved top prospects, but the calculus that we have to make is ultimately what is the impact this is making and how many wins are we losing going forward,' he said.
But all logic that doesn't make the Cubs' situation any more enviable now or in the future. The Cubs are going to need some luck to make a run in the postseason, and they'll still need to spend money — not chairman Tom Ricketts' favorite thing to do — in the offseason to keep this train moving.
It all comes back to money. If the Cubs had paid up for Alex Bregman in the offseason or spent more money on pitching — aside from Matthew Boyd's bargain of a deal — then Hoyer wouldn't be in the position to worry about the price of deadline poker.
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But that's not the Cubs' reality, and Hoyer is left trying to toe the line between the present and the future.
'I think the job is to make the best decisions for the organization,' he said. 'And there's times that's focused on just right now and there's times that's focused on the future. And those are the conversations we have every day. So we try to be as unemotional about those as possible.'
In related news, the Cubs DFA'd former closer Ryan Pressly to make room for Rogers, the aforementioned reliever acquired from the Pirates. In his last outing in Milwaukee on Tuesday, Pressly gave up a grand slam to Andrew Vaughn to break open a close game.
Pressly was one of Hoyer's big acquisitions this offseason, but he didn't pitch up to his reputation and lost his job to Daniel Palencia. Now he's looking for a new place to pitch.
Can Rogers and Kittredge help the bullpen survive? Can those two, along with Soroka, be the kinds of 'out-getters' that manager Craig Counsell needs?
Will any of the prospects they didn't trade, like Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcantara and Moisés Ballesteros, be the reinforcements the team needs down the stretch?
On a day when the Cubs were supposed to get some answers, a lot of questions remain.
The most important one — 'Did the Cubs do enough?' — will be answered over the next two to three months.
(Photo of Kyle Tucker: Benny Sieu / Imagn Images)