CHICAGO — A couple of hours before his team took the field this season for the first time since he spent $300 million on new players, Chicago Cubs president Jed Hoyer learned from a press box wag that at least one national baseball pundit decided his manager, David Ross, is the likeliest to be the first MLB manager fired this year.
“That’s a ridiculous prognostication,” scoffed Hoyer, who a year ago gave Ross a contract extension and a crap roster.
In fact, Ross has such a strong relationship with Hoyer and ownership — and received such high marks for his work during three historically aberrant seasons to start his career — that few managers have more job security than he does entering the season.
If anything, that prediction is probably a sign of perceptions outside this collection of veterans, promising kids, building blocks, castoffs and strays — a team that goes this year from back-to-back seasons of discount payrolls and losing seasons to suddenly flirting with MLB’s payroll luxury-tax threshold with a largely afterthought of a roster.
“I just hope the expectations are high in that room,” Hoyer said of the clubhouse. “I think that’s what’s really matters.”
Good thing for the Cubs. Because outside that room, two prominent projection formulas (PECOTA and ZiPS) have the Cubs winning 77 and 78 games this season, respectively. Early Vegas lines landed right in the middle at 77.5.
Will Chicago Cubs’ spending spree equal success?
So are the Chicago Cubs for real, the way their significantly ramped-up payroll would suggest?
Or is that a mirage, skewed by the $177 million they gave Dansby Swanson, the consensus No. 4 of the four big free agent shortstops last winter?
For his part, Swanson told anyone who would listen during spring training that the Chicago Cubs have the ingredients to compete with the Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals for the division this year — pitching, vastly improved fielding and a lineup more versatile, with more ability, than most people seem to believe.
Then he drove in the Cubs’ first run of the season with a third-inning single off Brewers ace Corbin Burnes in Thursday’s opener, added two more hits, and made four nice plays in the field to back scoreless pitching by Marcus Stroman and three relievers in a 4-0 season-opening victory.
“This is not like an ‘I-told-you-so’ moment, but it’s just awesome when you’re proved right,” Swanson said. “It’s just such a great thing for our team, because it just gives even more believability in who we are.”
Said Stroman: “I don’t have a single ounce of doubt in this team. I’m just excited to go out there and show people what we can do.”
With an off day Friday, the Chicago Cubs get at least two days to bask in life at the top in 2023 and dream on a path to October.
But there’s a reason those projection models don’t see a winning team in the Cubs. And a reason Hoyer doesn’t talk as boldly as some of his players about where he predicts this team will wind up — he’s seen too much in two decades as a baseball exec to make that mistake.
‘They have to be great players this year’
If the opener was a sign of anything to come — if they’re actually for real, as in playoffs — the Chicago Cubs will be the contender on nobody’s radar, the surprise of the field.
Too many bounce-back gambles (Cody Bellinger, Eric Hosmer), too little bankable run scoring — even Thursday’s scoring, all in the third, came on three singles, a couple of walks and an error — too much that has to go right for team with a cast of arguably good, but not great, players.
Arguably?
“I disagree with not having great players,” Ross said. “We’ve got a former MVP on the team [Cody Bellinger], so that’s a great player. I think [Ian] Happ, an All-Star, Gold Glover, that’s a great player. We’ve got World Series winners all over the field. Eric Hosmer’s got four Gold Gloves and All-Stars. I don’t know how you define great players?
“They have to be great players this year. So, sure. Are some guys going to have to take a step forward in 2023 from 2022? Absolutely. That’s every year.”
But no year like this year for this team. That’s the thing.
Hoyer did add Gold Glove winners at catcher, first base, shortstop and in the outfield since last season. And they did have a pitching staff that performed among the best in baseball through last year’s second half (and, for what it’s worth, this spring), with most of them returning, and $68 million free agent Jameson Taillon added to the fold.
And the opener might have demonstrated their margin for error against good teams/pitchers as much as anything: They scored in only one inning; and the other team in none.
That’s not a reliable recipe for anybody. And for the third-best team on paper, in a second-tier division, it’s a bad plan.
And for all those Gold Glove winners, the former MVP, Bellinger, has a .648 OPS over the past three seasons; 2016 All-Star Hosmer is only on this team because the Chicago Cubs could get him for one year at the league minimum after the Red Sox released him with three years and $39 million left on his $144 million contract; and Trey Mancini (.239 with a .710 OPS for two teams last year) is the closest thing they added to a recent-vintage impact bat after losing three-time All-Star Willson Contreras from the middle of their order to free agency.
And make no mistake: As Hoyer pointed out, they run a gauntlet of loaded contenders the first month of the season — with the Brewers, Texas Rangers, Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Dodgers (seven times) and San Diego Padres accounting for 19 of their first 25 games.
Much of this discussion might be moot by May.
But for now they bask.
And dream on the possibilities that seemed a little more real after one game — no matter how many remain.
“I don’t like to talk about anything, but our starting five’s legit. Legit, legit,” Stroman said when asked whether the rotation is good enough to make the Cubs, well, a legit threat in the league. “[Rookie Hayden] Wesneski’s our five, and he’s nasty. Taillon’s nasty. [Drew] Smyly’s nasty. [Justin] Steele’s filthy as well.
“Let’s just get to it. Let’s just see what happens this year.”
Gordon Wittenmyer covers Major League Baseball for Sportsnaut. You can follow him on Twitter at @GDubCub.