DALLAS — The New York Mets lured Juan Soto to Queens by giving him a 15-year, $765 million deal, the richest contract in pro sports history. The Mets outbid some of the biggest franchises in all of baseball, a group that included the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox. Conspicuously absent from the sweepstakes were the Chicago Cubs, who came into the offseason knowing they wouldn’t even engage in the process for one of the most impactful offensive talents in the game.
It was the worst-kept secret in baseball that the Cubs weren’t going to shop at the top of the market this winter, but in his suite at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas on Monday of the Winter Meetings, team president Jed Hoyer acknowledged to a group of local media members the team’s lack of interest on the record for the first time.
“There’s nothing that precludes us that keeps us from being involved in those players,” Hoyer said. “I think we organizationally decided not to pursue that one. That doesn’t mean in the future we won’t. But that was one we didn’t.”
Hoyer knows he needs impactful offensive talents and admitted they need “significant production out of individual players.” But he also felt it was less about adding stars and more about having a player produce a five-plus win season. In his view, that doesn’t have to come from a player who is added via free agency at the very top of the market.
It was a “long and thought out” process deciding not to pursue Soto, according to Hoyer. But in the end, they chose to go about improving their team in a different manner.
One path the Cubs are exploring is trading Cody Bellinger. That move alone doesn’t make them better, of course, but it provides both roster and financial flexibility in order to find unique ways to improve the roster. Soto’s signing could break the dam of activity for the winter.
The bidding war for Juan Soto is over after he agreed to a 15-year, $765 million deal with the Mets. (Jay Biggerstaff / Imagn Images)
“I think there’s more chatter,” Hoyer said speaking in general about the aftermath of the Soto signing. “(There were) five teams actively locked in on one thing. So I think that frees that up. Lot of discussion of the contract, lot of discussion of how that changes things. So that did pick things up. Which is not unexpected.”
While the New York Yankees, who missed out on Soto, are viewed as a logical landing spot, the market for Bellinger is still developing. According to one team source, they wouldn’t be surprised if Bellinger was traded this week, but Hoyer was hesitant to suggest that the Cubs would be making any moves of significance over the next few days.
“They’ve condensed these things enough that I doubt it,” Hoyer said. “Do I think we can get to place where we do a lot of groundwork and that leads to something? Absolutely. I do feel like it usually takes things longer to get all the way there. We’re working hard on stuff and we had a lot of conversations over the weekend leading into this. The Soto thing made for more chatter.”
As far as a flurry of activity occurring now that Soto has signed, Hoyer didn’t rule it out.
“It could,” he said. “(Monday) was a busy morning exactly as expected.”
Bellinger opted into his $27.5 million deal for 2025 (that comes with either a $5 million buyout for 2026 or a $25 million 2026 player option), which came as a slight surprise to the Cubs. Bellinger had a solid if unspectacular season after a strong bounce back in 2023. His 109 wRC+ was a step back from the 136 he produced in his first season with the Cubs, but he was dinged significantly by a Wrigley Field that played dramatically toward pitchers in 2024. On the road, Bellinger posted a 117 wRC+ but a 99 wRC+ at Wrigley Field. In 2023, Bellinger posted a 143 wRC+ at home.
The Cubs are unclear what type of return they can get for Bellinger. But they could market him to any team looking for outfield or first base help and his suppressed offense at Wrigley Field could be sold as more of a blip rather than a step back to his poor stretch of performance prior to arriving with the Cubs.
Enough chatter has occurred at the Winter Meetings to make a Bellinger trade feel likely, with some believing it to be inevitable. How the Cubs proceed after that is unknown, but there is an acknowledgment that the path to upgrading the offense isn’t happening via free agency.
“I think it’s safe to say that happening is most likely to happen via trade,” Hoyer said about changing the offensive group.
Hoyer was clear that continuing to build out the rotation, upgrade the bullpen and finalizing an addition at catcher — as of Monday night, they were nearing a deal with veteran Carson Kelly — was their priority. But keeping the same group on offense feels like a risk. So the question will soon become who it is they can add to impact the group and how big of a priority do Hoyer and the front office view upgrading the offense.
“We have a good offense, it has some upside to it,” Hoyer said. “We have a lot of young players underneath those guys. But, yeah, if there’s areas we can clearly upgrade, I think we’d look to do that. One of the challenges is we have a lot of good players, so in order to upgrade over those players, you have to clear that bar by a fair amount on certain guys in order to make the move justified.”
The Cubs, as shown by back-to-back 83-win campaigns, don’t have a bad team. But Hoyer’s challenge is to find a way to make them good. To make this a roster that isn’t in the periphery — or worse, forgotten by the general public — but once again challenging for the top of the league.
(Top photo of Bellinger: Gary A. Vasquez / Imagn Images)
