Hoyer: Wins and waiting led to Cubs ‘not selling’

CHICAGO — It turned on a comeback. Or perhaps a game-saving catch in the ninth inning. Or a 17-run outburst. The Chicago Cubs were ready to subtract from their team this trade deadline, but a sudden win streak changed the trajectory of their season.

“There was a period where it looked like we were going to be sellers,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said Tuesday evening. “We were seven games under .500, playing the Nationals and down 3-0, about to go eight under, and we ended up scoring 17 that night and sort of didn’t look back for a while. That wasn’t very long ago.”

Including that night, the team won 10 of its next 12 games, sending scouts who were watching Cody Bellinger — Hoyer said he was “popular in my early conversations” — back to their teams empty-handed. The Cubs were no longer in the business of trading away veteran assets.

“They (opposing executives) were asking about players we were going to have available,” Hoyer said. “It was interesting, more and more as we got into it deep last week, teams were calling, saying, ‘You’re not selling. You guys are good, you guys are going to buy.’ People stopped taking us seriously as a seller.”

If other teams thought the Cubs should be buyers, team brass figured they were right. Instead of taking calls on Bellinger, they started making them, landing Washington Nationals third baseman Jeimer Candelario on Monday.

“He was the best fit,” Hoyer said. “Candidly, it was a seller’s market. It was not a robust market.”

Chicago’s decision to change directions was also fueled by the National League standings. Though only 54-53, the Cubs are just four games out of the division lead and 3½ games out of a wild-card spot.

“There’s no question that where our division sits and where the wild card sits this year, that was a big part of it, for sure,” Hoyer said. “We look at our underlying numbers, the team is even better than our record. The fans have really responded to this group.”

For much of the year, the Cubs were the only team in the NL Central with a positive run differential, but their hitting and pitching in high-leverage moments was abysmal. The team figured if those numbers normalized, they would have a chance. Positive regression came at exactly the right time — just days before Tuesday’s trade deadline.

An eight-game win streak, which ended Sunday, sealed the Cubs’ fate. It included a comeback win against the White Sox on Wednesday, two days before another victory fueled by an over-the-wall, game-saving catch by center fielder Mike Tauchman with two outs in the ninth inning against the St. Louis Cardinals.

“The biggest focus we had was waiting and letting it play out,” Hoyer said. “Not shortchanging the process by making a decision too early. We wanted to see how we played throughout the weekend in St. Louis. As we got closer, it became pretty clear what our direction was going to be.”

The team also tried to add bullpen help, but Hoyer indicated the Cubs were never very close to another deal. Either way, it might feel like addition by not subtraction for a team that has it sights set on returning to the postseason for the first time since 2020. Over the course of about 10 days, everything changed for them.

“In a lot of ways, they made it really easy, the way the team played,” Hoyer said.