Will the Chicago Cubs be buyers or sellers at the Aug. 3 trade deadline?
Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said Friday that the next two weeks will give his club a clearer picture of the landscape both in Chicago and across the league.
Right now, there’s just too much uncertainty about which teams are going to be selling.
“I just think that we’ve got to wait, we’ve got to get closer to the deadline — this year, some years it’s not that case,” Hoyer said before the opener of a three-game series against the Minnesota Twins at Wrigley Field. “This year there’s a jumble, and everyone in the AL pretty much is still in the race.”
Hoyer referenced 2023, when the Cubs looked like sellers at five games below .500 at the All-Star break. At one point after the break they won 10 of 11 to propel themselves back into the playoff conversation.
The Cubs held onto star Cody Bellinger at the trade deadline that year and traded for third baseman Jeimer Candelario. They wound up finishing one game out of a wild-card spot.
The point is, it’s too soon to know, even as the deadline is just more than two weeks away. Are the Cubs — who entered Friday night in the top wild-card spot and five games back of the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central — going to be buying?
“Yeah, I mean we’ve put ourselves in a good position,” Hoyer said. “I’m not ruling out any kind of position-player transaction, but the expectation is that we’ll focus on the pitching staff.”
The next two weeks should inform what exactly that might look like — including which injured Cubs pitchers might be ready to help.
Starter Jameson Taillon should be back next week. That’s welcomed news for the Cubs rotation, which was decimated by injuries in the first half. The right-hander suffered a hamstring injury in early June.
Manager Craig Counsell said Taillon would be activated for the three-game series against the Detroit Tigers, which begins Monday. The Cubs have yet to determine which game Taillon will pitch.
“Hopefully Jameson will pitch coming up next week,” Hoyer said. “He’s the closest, but the hope is that the guys start to trickle back. We keep getting good news on guys, and it would be great to be in that position.”
Right-handed starter Edward Cabrera, who was carted off in late June with a left hamstring/adductor strain, pitched off the mound Thursday and will throw live batting practice next week. The Cubs are eyeing a return in the second week of August.
Lefty reliever Hoby Milner (appendectomy) is “pretty much” healed and eyeing an early-August return.
Closer Daniel Palencia (flexor strain) went to Arizona to rehab over the All-Star break and remains there as the Cubs begin the second half this weekend.
“We’re making progress with Daniel, but we’re kind of not moving forward,” Counsell said. “We’re just having to repeat some steps. So the original timetable of early August has been pushed back to probably mid-August, assuming we move forward from here.”
Counsell said there has been no change in the timeline for starter Justin Steele (flexor strain). Counsell said Steele, who hasn’t pitched since April 2025, could start throwing bullpen sessions as early as this week.
“His ramp-up is just longer because he hasn’t pitched in two years,” Counsell said. “It’s just a longer ramp-up, so he has to do more and pass more tests.”
As for position players, third baseman Matt Shaw is still dealing with a wrist sprain that is “lingering,” Counsell said. Shaw is not currently swinging the bat.
Any potential reinforcements off the IL for the pitching staff won’t affect what the Cubs do at the trade deadline, Hoyer said. For a Cubs team that has dealt with all sorts of injuries to pitchers, Hoyer is maintaining his adage that a team can’t have too many arms.
“I think I’ve said a million times, you can never have too much pitching and you never have enough,” he said. “This first half has proven that. We thought we went in (to the season) with real depth and we got to the end of our depth and had to trade for guys and pick up guys.
“I think the hope of guys coming back off the injured list, I don’t think that’s going to temper our need. I’d love to (say), ‘Oh, we have too much.’ I don’t see that ever really happening.”
