The Chicago Cubs looked like the best team in Major League Baseball on several occasions during the 2026 regular season. Unfortunately for manager Craig Counsell and president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, they were unable to sustain their success and finished well behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the race for the National League Central title.
As the regular season ended and the Wild Card round of the playoffs got underway, the Cubs were just a shell of themselves. The hitting that had dominated during a pair of double-digit win streaks earlier in the year was not good enough. However, the bigger problem with the team was its pitching. The Cubs had huge issues with their starting pitching and the bullpen.
They were not playing at anything close to the same level as the San Diego Padres and they were beaten in the Wild Card round of the postseason in consecutive games. The season ended abruptly and in the most disappointing fashion. The Cubs were hoping that the duo of Pete Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman that had been so hot in the second half of the season would give them a fighting chance to survive and advance.
However, neither of those players were able to produce in the two games against the Padres and the supporting cast did not help out enough to make a difference
The Cubs finished 14.0 games behind the Brewers in the regular season and were eliminated quickly in the postseason. If this team is going to rise above that kind of mediocre performance, there must be significant changes within the organization.
Hoyer's leadership is not good enough
The Cubs did not have the identity of a championship team this season. It is difficult to name the strength of this team other than through the exceptional performance of Crow-Armstrong during the year. He is almost certainly going to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award this season, and the biggest question is whether the vote will be unanimous.
That does not mean that PCA has overtaken Shohei Ohtani as the best baseball player overall, because nobody can touch the two-way Japanese superstar when he is fully healthy. However, Ohtani was not fully healthy this year and did very little on the mound and did not have the kind of offensive numbers that he has put up in the past.
PCA is a game-breaking talent who also gets the job done in a brilliant manner as a defensive player and is an exceptional base stealer. But that does not mean the Cubs have a true strength or identity.
They are a solid defensive team, but that did not help them overcome the Brewers in the regular season or the Padres in the playoffs.
Hoyer did not give the team the kind of excellence from their pitching staff that is needed today. While hard-throwing pitchers like Jacob Misiorowski, Paul Skenes, Cam Schlittler, Hunter Greene and Chase Burns have dominated the headlines, the Cubs don't have that kind of velocity from their starters.
Cubs pitching staff was simply too mediocre to beat the best teams
They tried to get by with Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd and David Peterson as three of their primary starters, and that allowed opposing hitters to breathe easier. That's not to diminish the skill of that trio, but opposing hitters knew they were not going to get blown away by 100-MPH fastballs that the hardest throwers employ on a regular basis.
The Cubs bullpen was also inconsistent and regularly lacked pitchers who had the ability to dominate in the middle or late innings. Relievers like Jacob Webb, Ryan Rolison and Caleb Thielbar simply could not give Counsell the high-level performances that are needed to win the most important games.
“I did a poor job in the bullpen this year, full stop,” Hoyer said, per ESPN reporter Jesse Rogers. “The guys we acquired this winter didn't produce nearly as well as they did a year ago.”
There's no reason to believe Hoyer will suddenly find the right pitchers to bring into the organization. It's time for the Cubs to move on from Hoyer.
Article Continues BelowCubs must find a pair of corner outfielders for the future
Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki have been loyal and productive members of the Cubs. However, both are free agents who seem destined to move on. Happ has the most seniority of any player on the team as heen with the Cubs since the 2017 season.
The 32-year-old left fielder is a good but not great player who strikes out too often. He homered 24 times last year but that was more than offset by his 189 strikeouts.
The 32-year-old Suzuki has been with the Cubs for five seasons and he had a career-best 32 home runs in 2025. The right fielder belted 26 last season. However, he is also prone to strikeouts — he had 155 last season — and he seems unlikely to return in 2027.
The Cubs have to find adequate replacements for these two players if they are going to upgrade their team in 2027.