Chicago Cubs: 4 questions that need answers this offseason

The Cubs have been reluctant to trade their young talent over the last few years. Is it finally time to deal some of their hitters?

A constant underlying storyline throughout the last three seasons has been whether or not the Cubs would part ways with some of their controllable young bats to bring in pitching help. So far, the front office hasn’t been willing to do that, but that may change this offseason.

The Cubs brought in Chili Davis as hitting coach after getting rocked by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2017 NLCS. Through the 2018 season’s first half, the Cubs were one of the scariest lineups in the league. After the All-Star game, that totally changed.

After a dismal offensive output in the second half of the season led to the team’s elimination in the NL Wild Card Game, the Cubs fired Davis after just one year with the club.

Davis doesn’t deserve all the blame for the Cubs’ bats faltering down the stretch. Although he was the hitting coach, it’s hard to know just how much of the struggles should be attributed to him.

In his end of season press conference, Epstein called out the players for the lack of offensive production:

"“Here’s where I am about the offense, I mean this with no disrespect to our players, I respect them all greatly in every way and our coaches and our front office and everybody involved. There’s no disrespect, but I think part of getting better is facing the problem. Our offense broke somewhere along the lines… That’s unacceptable. We have to be an offensive force. We should be with the talent on our roster, but it’s probably time to stop evaluating this in terms of talent and start evaluating in terms of production. We need to do everything we can to produce offensively.”"

If the Cubs are really going to evaluate the roster based on production and not the talent potential, it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see some trades before the start of Spring Training.

Besides NL MVP candidate Javier Baez, nearly every young hitter on the team either plateaued or regressed in 2018.

In terms of OPS, Albert Almora Jr., Ian Happ, Addison Russell, Kris Bryant, and Willson Contreras all had the worst seasons of their young MLB careers.

Kyle Schwarber was better than he was last year and put up solid numbers, but his production was still nowhere near what it was projected to be when he arrived in Chicago a few years ago.

The disappointing end to the season, awful numbers in the second half, and Epstein’s sharp remarks all seem to indicate that at least one of the players just mentioned will get traded this offseason.

Bryant and Contreras will both be safe, but Almora, Happ, Russell, and Schwarber are all likely on the chopping block. Sending a few of those players packing while they still have valuable team-controlled years left before they hit free agency may be the best move.

The narrative over the past few seasons was that the Cubs need starting pitching help. After the way the season ended, the front office may be looking for consistent veteran bats instead.