Jed Hoyer: Pitching Must Improve, Home Playoff Games Are Good

Jed Hoyer held his annual postseason press conference on Friday afternoon, which the Cubs’ media release somewhat hilariously listed as October 1, and the content was just about as exciting as wet cardboard. It’s really not even worth covering, but I didn’t have anything better to do than watch Marquee — which I plan to cancel until the Cubs start playing again — while waiting for my daughter’s appointment to conclude.

Hoyer sounded almost exactly like Matt Nagy during his Bears tenure, when yet another dumb loss was followed by the coach saying he’d have to review the tape to know what went wrong. While Hoyer was slightly less befuddled than Nagy, there was little of substance in the answers he provided. Among the central tenets of the roughly 30-minute media session were the facts that the Cubs’ pitching was not good enough and that it’s better to host playoff games.

The only slightly revelatory response was that the Cubs could be active in the brief period of free agency between the end of the World Series and the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement. That will last for all of November, and could include some of October depending on how many games are played in the Fall Classic. The CBA expires at 11:59pm ET on December 1, after which the owners figure to lock the players out. Hoyer mentioned that there were some deals that could make sense regardless of the specific CBA rules, and those are what they would look to target in that initial period of free agency.

The president of baseball operations declined to speak with any depth about the futures of players whose contracts will or may be ending with the league year, which was par for the course. He blamed himself for doing a poor job of building the bullpen, and reiterated the need to prioritize pitching above all else for next season and beyond.

And that’s pretty much all there is to say about that. Gluttons for punishment can watch the whole thing here: