There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Cubs this offseason, but unless the front office is shaken up (which doesn’t appear likely), there’s really just one question:
What do the Cubs do with their core?
As far as I can tell, they’ve got three choices.
Choice #1: Blow It Up
The implication of this choice is that it’s the players who are wrong, either through a lack of ability, misdevelopment, or some strange mental phenomenon. If we define the core as Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Javier Báez, and Kyle Schwarber—all of whom are approaching free agency following the 2021 season, unless I’ve misunderstood something—blowing it up would mean trading away at the very least least one of the four. The narrative would say that this would most likely be Bryant or Schwarber. Each has come up in trade speculation with frequency in recent years. Remember, though: The market will dictate some of this. Nothing, to our knowledge, is off the table. Though one would, to be fair, guess Rizzo to be safer than Báez.
Choice #2: Change the Surroundings
This has been the move rather consistently in recent years: Change hitting coaches. It might be the right move. It might be compounding the problem. There’s no way to know with any certainty what the impact is, but the implication of this move is that the Cubs think this is a development problem: They’ve got talent and they’ve failed to develop it. If that’s the root issue, one would imagine it goes deeper than just Anthony Iapoce, or Chili Davis before him. (Or supposedly John Mallee before him? What a strange firing that was, and how much stranger it looks in hindsight.) Presumably, if this is the problem, it’s organizational, so if they go this route, one would think we’ll see more heads roll.
Choice #3: Status Quo
The implication if the Cubs stand pat and hope things get better is that they either believe this year was just a strange small sample size, there isn’t enough of a trade market to make something happen, or they want to give Iapoce one more year to at least give the hitters some stability. Don’t underestimate the likelihood of this one. It’s difficult to assess exactly how likely it is, so it’s possible it’s unlikely, but we don’t actually know that at this point, and many of the people peddling the “the Cubs will blow up the core” narrative have an incentive, like all of us, to get you to click on their stuff. They might be right. They might be wrong. We’ll find out. It’s a long offseason.
