Jed Hoyer Just Admitted What Most GMs Won’t About the Trade Deadline

Jed Hoyer did something rare for a front office executive at this time of year. He told the truth.

The Cubs president of baseball operations spoke to reporters Friday and basically said what a lot of teams are thinking but won’t say out loud: nobody is really doing much right now.

ESPN’s Jesse Rogers was there and summed it up on social media. Hoyer’s exact words were pretty straightforward. “There’s not like tons of teams looking to move players at this moment. Everyone is bunched together.”

That’s not spin. That’s just the reality of a league where 20 or so teams still think they have a shot. The standings are compressed. The wild card races are crowded. And that means sellers aren’t rushing to sell and buyers aren’t finding much to buy.

Chicago already made one pitching move

The Cubs did grab lefty David Peterson from the Mets earlier this week in a trade that felt like a low-cost depth play more than a deadline splash. Peterson fills a spot in a rotation that’s been gutted by injuries. But he’s not exactly the kind of addition that moves the needle in a division race.

Manager Craig Counsell had an interesting take on how difficult it is to actually find reliable arms this time of year. He pointed out that real acquisitions don’t happen every day. Waiver claims do. But those are usually scraps.

“The cumulative effect is you just start running out of pitchers in your organization that are ready to go,” Counsell said, via The Athletic. “We have, obviously, bodies. But the quality has to go down. We don’t have that big of a stockpile. I don’t think anybody does.”

He added that the Cubs will keep looking. But nobody should expect a parade of impact arms through Wrigley anytime soon.

The IL list keeps growing

When reliever Hoby Milner hit the IL last week, he became the 12th Cubs pitcher to land there this season. Twelve. That’s not a bad stretch of luck. That’s a full-on pitching staff operating out of a MASH unit.

So yeah, the Cubs need help. But Hoyer’s not going to overpay just because his bullpen looks like a triage tent. He’s playing the long game. The question is whether the rest of the roster can stay afloat long enough for that to matter.

The deadline is still a couple weeks out. Things could heat up. Right now though, Hoyer is out here saying the quiet part loud: nobody really knows what they’re doing yet.