CHICAGO -- While his team is mired in an offensive slump, Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer called the Aug. 3 trade deadline "the furthest thing from my mind," while also acknowledging the organization's needs if the Cubs are in the race at that time.
"Our position player group is deep, and it's pretty set," Hoyer said Friday morning. "The backbone of our team is our position players. They have to play well for us to be a good team.
"We'll be looking at pitching at that point. [But] sitting here talking about the deadline, given how we've played, is the wrong thing to talk about."
Chicago has gone backward in the standings even after winning 10 games in a row twice already this season. The Cubs also lost 10 straight, including eight in a row at Wrigley Field -- a streak broken only by a miraculous four-run, ninth-inning rally over the Athletics on Thursday in a 7-6 win. Those offensive outputs have been few and far between since early May.
"We need to get back to getting big hits in big moments," Hoyer said.
Scoring has dried up since those better days in April, mostly thanks to the team's inability to earn hits with runners in scoring position. Chicago ranks 28th in that category while also going through some home run droughts. Meanwhile, its pitching staff ranks first in home runs allowed -- also part of the tanking in the standings. The Cubs went from first place in early May to near the bottom of the NL Central in a matter of weeks.
"Intuitively, you know this group of players is too good to have it last forever, but it's lasted longer than we all hoped," Hoyer said of the slump.
So the Cubs are relying on their best hitters to return to form while they navigate around their pitching injuries. Edward Cabrera (blister) was just activated off the IL for Friday's game against the San Francisco Giants, while Matthew Boyd (knee) isn't far behind him. But their returns won't be enough. Chicago still needs more pitching. And though Hoyer is always active around the trade deadline, there are degrees of aggressiveness. He was asked if better World Series odds mean a more aggressive approach as opposed to a team that has a major need but is languishing in wild-card territory
"Your World Series odds are probably going to be correlated to your odds of getting a bye, and getting a bye is such a big deal," Hoyer said. "A lot of that aggressiveness is based on that ability to get the bye."
The Cubs will need to repass the Milwaukee Brewers to at least have a chance at that bye. That's no small task considering they're 5½ games behind Milwaukee entering play this weekend with two other teams in front of them as well. It's why Hoyer isn't thinking about late July right now.
"The trade deadline is the furthest thing from my mind right now, given how we've played," he said. "We just have to play better. That's the priority.
"Some of these slumps give me comfort. I know that sounds strange. We have really good, established players. They're going to get hot, they're going to get to their numbers. That's just how this works."