MLB: Assessing the NL Central GMs at the midway point
By Bill Felber
Chicago Cubs, GM Jed Hoyer, -4.3 games
Over the winter, the Cubs cut ties with ace starter Yu Darvish (+1.7), starter Jon Lester (-1.0) and outfielder Kyle Schwarber (+1.1), and everybody decided Chicago was throwing in the towel.
Then the Cubs finished May in first place in their division and everybody cast them as trade deadline buyers.
Now they have wrapped up June and began July with a nine-game losing streak and everybody sees them as trade deadline sellers again.
The wisdom of those winter deals is coming fully into question. Darvish went to the Padres with catcher Victor Caratini (-0.4) for Zach Davies (-0.3), a net impact on the Cubs of -1.6 games. The loss of Schwarber to the Nationals cost another game.
Hoyer has tried to offset those losses through free agent signings, 18 of them in all. The most noteworthy was Jake Arrieta. But Arrieta (-2.1) suffered through a 5-8, 5.57 first half. Joc Pederson (-1.1) was brought in from Los Angeles to replace Schwarber, running the effective difference of the Schwarber decision on the Cubs to -2.1 games.
Starter Trevor Williams (-0.7) has missed much of the first half with injuries. That brings the bottom line impact of all of Hoyer’s MLB free agent signings to date to a problematic -5.1 games. When a GM does that poorly on the open market, there’s trouble afoot.