Rahimi, Harris & Grote Show - Reacting to what we heard from Jed Hoyer about Cubs' disappointing end to season

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Leila Rahimi and Mark Grote reacted to what they heard from Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer in his season-ending press conference Friday afternoon.

Rahimi and Grody, Midday's Tyndal 2 on Chicago Sports Radio 1043, the score. I mean, I think we had a pretty imbalanced season in a lot of ways. Our position playing group, I think it was the best in baseball. You know, we had the best offense. We had really balanced offense in a lot of ways. We did a strike out a lot. We had homers. We walked.

We played fantastic defense. From a pitching standpoint this year, it was sort of struggle from the get-go. Welcome back to Rahimi and Grotia on 104-3. The Score. Hope you enjoyed the Jed Hoyer Press Conference, the Cubs President of Baseball Operations, from whom you just heard right there, talking for about 40 minutes out at Wrigley Field, answering tons of questions from the media. And Layla, I guess my theme from this, if I had to use one of his quotes to sum up all

of what we just heard, and it is the truth, the overall quality of the pitching has to improve. And that was the theme throughout, if you want to get specific, the swing and miss aspect of it. It was Edward Cabrera who was support, because we talked about that. Like, Edward Cabrera was supposed to be the changing of that, right? Kate Horton at the beginning of the season. We asked Judd last week about Edward Cabrera, and you could tell that he was frustrated with his performance too. Absolutely. And in this press conference, said they have to get more out.

of him, but what does that really mean? Now, what was surprising was how harshly Jed talked about the pitching when he talked about not just needing to improve, but bringing up infrastructure. I thought that meant coaching staff and possibly other things, because

you've had some indictments on your pitch lab lately. One of them closes games in Milwaukee, you know, in Trevor McGill. So, how are you going to try to make that better? And then him saying, that he was bad at the bullpen this year.

He admitted it. Full stop. I did a poor job on the bullpen this year. Full stop was the quote that I wrote down. Yeah. No, and he blamed himself for that. He is correct to point out that they did a great job of surviving at certain points in the season when we literally didn't know who the starting pitcher would be because of Horton, because of steel, because of Ben Brown, because of James and Tyone, because of Matthew Boyd. I mean, I'm just listing pitchers who have been injured this year for the Cubs.

But he also said correctly, and there was a time where it felt like the Chicago Cubs were the best team in baseball. But they let it slip away. They let it slip away and the offense sucked at the end of the season. And he mentioned that too. He said we let this slip away. I didn't hear the totality of the season talk from Jed Hoyer like we had heard before. I heard somebody who knew that they had their chance, and I think a lot of other,

I've talked about this with Russ Dorsi last week, a lot of other teams in the National League smell blood in the water. Could this be the year the Dodgers aren't as powerful in the postseason? And you had the chance, and unfortunately just like losing home field, which he touched on.

Yeah. You didn't get it done. Yeah. No, you did not. You didn't get it done. I thought it was interesting, too, that, look, brought up the idea of, I guess, a reporter probably,

the idea of developing your own pitching, which they have gotten better at. And I'm going all the way back to Theo Epstein because they really didn't even try when Theo Epstein was here. Yeah, they accepted it. They did. They did. They were just like, nope, we're going to spend on pitching. We're going to develop hitting.

Yeah, right. And it worked. And they're probably going to have to. They need an ace. They went out back then and got John Lester. They made the trade for Jake Carrietta. Nobody knew that it was going to work out as well as it did. You look at it now.

and there's two pitchers that they were developing, Kate Horton and Justin Steele. I don't know if I'm leaving anybody out, like starter-wise, but there still hasn't been enough of that. Maybe it's Jackson Wiggins. Maybe he is somebody that is developing and maybe he will become an ace for the Cubs,

but they need an ace. That's basically the theme of you and I have said that. I said that ahead of it. It doesn't matter who starts because all the Cubs pitchers right now are the same. They're all decent, right? Would that be the word? of the Cubs starters, decent number threes.

Yes, three's on a playoff team. And he said there's not enough swing or somebody said there's not no swing and miss. I thought that was Jed. That was. And that's another point to this. Now, he did point out Clay Holmes. I would like that Megan Montemarrow asked him about Clay Holmes because should have. You gave up a lot for him and he didn't even pitch in the postseason.

And then Jed talking about how he fit with the team by keeping the ball down. So it sounds like that may be a shift in philosophy. They may want to get back to more groundball pitchers instead of guys who tunnel with a high fastball because they want their defense to be able to collect that. That was, even when they brought him in, I thought that that might have been the case because he was different from the rest of what they had, but still not a swing and miss guy. And they haven't had historically many of those. I mean, think about how long Kyle Hendricks lasted with this ball club, and he wasn't that.

No, I mean, Lester and Areietta were, but... Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I mean, that's really about it. some of the questions too that were coming in about how much culpability, how much responsibility does Jed Hoyer have and what would you say about you and all of that? And he said he had to be better, but he also did point out at the very beginning that it's on his watch that expectations have been raised by the Cubs to a time when they were just happy to be there in the playoffs and now the expectations from Cubs fans is get there.

I take a little exception to that because that is that is. the precedent that you set. And Cubs fans should be greedy. Cubs fans should expect to not just get to the playoffs, but win in the playoffs. Yeah, you did. You raised the bar. So now you've got to accept it and take responsibility for the bar when the bar goes down. No, I agree with that.

And I feel like there were times when the mantra just get into the playoffs was also theirs since the World Series. Yeah. So if that's the case, you can't really stand by that anymore. We were kind of talking off the air about our interpretations of Ian Hap. And Jet Hoyer did say, did say everything's still on the table. And then he went on to speak glowingly of him, as he should, because of his embracing Ian Hap as he does every week on our show,

embracing of Cubsness and the whole thing that comes with it. And the early days that were a little fragile, like when Ian Hap got sent down, he was pissed. Ian Hap was pissed and I think still has not gotten over that. But I don't know. How did you hear that? Did you hear that Hap's coming back or do you think that he's not? I kind of, it sounded to me like somebody who wants to bring back.

But maybe, I don't know, maybe that was his way of also saying goodbye. Yeah, that's kind of what I felt. I felt like he was giving the proper amount of respect to somebody like Ian Hap, like because of what he's meant. So he's not going to come out and be like, yeah, he's out of here. He's gone. You just can't do that with the,

with a player that's been around this long. It's been that, I mean, God, he brought Dansby Swanson to tears. Yeah. He brought PCA to tears. Like,

I don't even think I knew how much Ian have meant in the clubhouse. No, I think that was a, we know what he means to us on Tuesdays. No doubt. You know, but when it came to just hearing those two talk about him, especially Danesby.

Like that was, that was really moving. It wasn't. I like, again, I know how much like the team likes Ian Hap, like, because why wouldn't you? I didn't realize it was that much, like to bring a man to, and maybe they know that he's not going to be around, but just speaking about Ian Hap, people get emotional in that clubhouse, which is amazing to me. Yeah. It's an incredibly high compliment, no matter how you look at it. It is. It is.

No doubt about it. We want to let you know tomorrow from two to three, you can tune in for the Bank of America, Chicago Marathon. Preview, hosted by Josh Liss and featuring race director, Carrie Pankowski, Jenny Spangler, and more. I was a part of the first episode. Nice. It's tomorrow at two right here on the score. I'll be listening, and you should be listening to what is about to go down next.

It's the most important edition of transition that you will ever hear. It is like a lifetime movie starring Valerie Burton Ernie. It is coming up next. We are going to have on. Not only will Spiegel and Holmes be here like they are for transition. We are expected to be joined by Mike Vassel during the transition. That is next on 104-3, the score. No, there's nothing like today and there's nothing like tomorrow.

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