Cubs wrap trade deadline with three deals completed, high stakes for the offense the rest of the season

CINCINNATI — Jed Hoyer, the Cubs’ president of baseball operations, plans to take a photo of the whiteboard in the team’s trade-deadline command center before erasing it. He compared it to the chalkboard in the movie “A Beautiful Mind.”

Hoyer has begun a collection of those pictures. Instead of math equations, the scrawl on the board is a record of the Cubs’ evolving plans for the transaction window — some trades that became reality, others that fell short or never really got off the ground.

“You realize how many different deals are talked about, and most don’t come together,” he said Tuesday after the 5 p.m. deadline had passed. “We did three deals, and of course, we talked about many more. But that’s the nature of the trade deadline.”

The three trades address Hoyer’s goal of improving the team for 2025 and beyond in slightly different ways. The headliner over the weekend brought in All-Star third baseman Isaac Paredes, solidifying the Cubs’ every-day infield group, potentially for years to come. To acquire him, they had to give up Christopher Morel — a young player with a lot of pop in his bat and just as much potential, despite a down offensive year — rookie reliever Hunter Bigge and minor-league pitcher Ty Johnson.

In their other two trades, the Cubs sent out prospects for a change-of-scenery reliever, Nate Pearson, then traded a high-leverage reliever, Mark Leiter Jr., for prospects on Tuesday.

“The goal wasn’t [to] just accumulate assets,” Hoyer said. “Going back to 2021, we took a lot of prospects that were far from the big leagues that year. . . . Obviously, very different strategy. And this year was very focused on next year and beyond.”

Notably, the Cubs didn’t trade right-hander Jameson Taillon, one of their top three starters and a frequent subject of speculation amid reports of interest from playoff contenders.

“A lot of players were asked about,” Hoyer said, declining to directly address trades that didn’t materialize. “There were a lot of deals bounced around, some just casually, some more seriously.”

Three made it across the finish line. And although the Cubs didn’t tear down the team, they also didn’t add with this year in mind.

“The group has not changed significantly,” manager Craig Counsell said. “And it’s our responsibility — we’ve got to be better. And we’re still in a place where I feel like we could do something here.”

Through the deadline, as Cubs got ready to face the Reds on Tuesday night, they sat six games back of the last spot in the National League wild-card race — a position that didn’t improve with a 6-3 loss.

Paredes’ impact will become clear over the next couple of months. On Tuesday, he made his Cubs debut after beginning his pro career in the organization in 2015. He hit fifth in the order and started at third base as the first Cub to wear No. 17 since Kris Bryant.

Hoyer said he didn’t pursue Paredes just to shake up the offense, calling that a “dangerous” approach. But Parades’ offensive profile was appealing. And Hoyer hopes to see progress from the team over the next two months.

“It’s been a really frustrating offensive season,” he said. “That is obvious.”

The Cubs ranked 23rd in runs scored entering Tuesday after finishing last season in the top six.

“It’s highly unlikely to be enough to get back in the race,” Hoyer said. “But that doesn’t mean these games aren’t really important as we try to evaluate what the offense is going into next year. And I’m hoping that we stabilize and start to show that we could be a solid offense like we were last year.”

And if they don’t?

“Rightfully,” Hoyer said, “there’ll be a lot of questions going into the offseason about, ‘How do we fix an offense that, with [mostly] the same players, went from a very good offense in ’23 to a well-below-average offense in ’24?’ ”