Jed Hoyer Finally Took Accountability for His Biggest Failure of 2024
I don’t know guys, Jed Hoyer talked to the media on Tuesday afternoon and I just do not have the energy to really care one way or the other about what he said. I’ve said it before, but it was nice getting some candidness from Theo Epstein when he was the boss and well, Jed simply isn’t going to give us that. At the end of the day, though, it doesn’t actually matter what’s said in these press conferences, actions are all that matter.
The only thing that did catch my attention was the bullpen talk. No, this probably isn’t going to change the mind of any fan that hates Jed Hoyer’s guts because at this point everything he says will be crushed, but for me it’s at least showing some sort of accountability.
During his end of the season press conference addressed the bullpen and Hoyer took the blame for the biggest failure of 2024.
Via 670 The Score.
“Being self-critical, I feel like that’s something I didn’t do a good job of last offseason,” Hoyer said. “When I look at our bullpen, I’m really proud of the work our whole staff did during the season. Talking about Carter (Hawkins) and Jared (Banner) and everyone in pro scouting did a really good job, whether that was Tyson Miller, Jorge Lopez, Nate Pearson, player development bringing up guys like Porter Hodge and Luke Little. I thought that in-season, we did a really good job of that. But when Adbert (Alzolay) struggled early, when Neris struggled early, when Julian (Merryweather) got hurt, we didn’t have the depth at that point that we needed, and that’s something we’ll really look to improve going forward, because I feel like that’s something that hurt us early. We were able to improve it.”
“At a critical moment when those guys struggled and were hurt early, we didn’t have enough depth in that moment, and that hurt us. So, that’s something we have to address.”
After the failures from the bullpen down the stretch in 2023, the Cubs ended up signing one veteran reliever to an MLB contract and boy oh boy was that experience rough. Hector Neris was the lone free agent signing that the Cubs brought in to have a set role in the bullpen for the 2024 season and it backfired.
The overall numbers for Neris don’t look disastrous, but fans watching him pitch once he took over the closer role know the truth. He was awful and even after a decent stretch during the summer the Cubs DFA’d the reliever, mainly to get out of his 2025 vesting option that would have seen the Cubs pay Neris another $9 million.
Beyond that the Cubs were relying on their 2023 studs, who had really only had one year of success, to repeat their performance again in 2024. Injuries hit and they kept coming. Sure, you can use that as an excuse, but the Cubs simply were not equipped to handle the adversity and the team suffered the consequences.
In 2024, the Cubs bullpen ended up being all right, finishing the season with a 3.81 ERA, 12th best in MLB. However, the main issue that plagued them all year long was that there was no good answer to close out games. The Cubs pen blew 26 saves, (not all were in the 9th inning) tied for eighth most in baseball.
At 83-79, the Cubs missed the playoffs by six games in the Wild Card and were 10 games behind the Brewers in the NL Central. It would have been nice to have an established closer from the very start of the season to, you know, maybe not blow all those games in April and May.
However, like I said at the top, Jed Hoyer saying my bad, doesn’t actually matter. The only thing that matters is what he and the rest of the front office does this offseason to actually make the bullpen a strength from start to finish. Cool, you guys did well with in-season acquisitions, but that was ultimately a band-aid for a huge problem that most Cubs fans had already envisioned heading into the year.