Cubs' trade deadline approach will focus on 2025: Who will be key pieces of that roster?

Unless the Chicago Cubs go on a week-long winning streak — something they haven’t done at any point this season — they will not be buyers at the July 30 trade deadline.

As Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer put it before Monday night’s 3-1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers, they won’t be adding any players with only the last two months of this season in mind.

Instead, any deals they make shouldn’t be viewed through the binary lens of buying versus selling but as moves with more of a long-term vision, intended to set them up for 2025 and beyond. Who the Cubs view as integral pieces of their future roster will be more clear after the deadline, but some mixture of young up-and-comers like Michael Busch, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya plus established veterans with years of control like Ian Happ and Dansby Swanson is likely the roster makeup on the offensive side.

Crow-Armstrong has impressed with his speed and defense — he stole his 18th base of the season (in his 18th attempt) in the seventh inning Monday — but his bat has yet to catch up to major league pitching. And Amaya regularly draws praise for his work behind the plate, but he has a .594 OPS.

Lack of production at the plate from the catcher position has been part of the reason the Cubs have had a hard time scoring this season.

“You look at where we rank among the league, that’s been a struggle,” Hoyer said of his catchers. “One difference between this year and last year is our lineup has felt more shallow. We’ve had games where it felt like the bottom of the order wasn’t producing, and last year, one of the things I thought we were really good at and part of why we were sixth in baseball in run scoring last year was that we were pretty deep one through nine, and that that hasn’t happened in the catching position has been part of that.”

Amaya is just 25 years old and is in only his second season, so even with his struggles this year, he will likely be in the conversation for the Cubs’ primary catcher in 2025. Crow-Armstrong had a cup of coffee last September, and even with this season, he has barely more than 200 major league plate appearances under his belt. So his role on the ‘25 Cubs could be similar to this year.

But where those two are still working on figuring things out at the major league level, Busch is quietly having a stellar rookie season. Acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers in January (along with Yency Almonte) for a pair of prospects, Busch is an example of the kind of trade Hoyer might make a week or so from now. Not a flashy move, but one that pays dividends in the long run.

Through 95 games, Busch’s .820 OPS leads the Cubs, and his 21 doubles trail only Happ. Busch had a pair of singles against the Brewers on Monday, including a third-inning RBI that gave the Cubs their first lead.

“Offensively, he’s been just consistent,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “He had a little [cold] stretch after the hot streak, but it feels like since June, super consistent. Good at-bats and a tough out.”

Busch’s defense at first base has improved over the course of the season, making him into the kind of player Counsell can write into his lineup on a more regular basis than some of the other younger players.

“I think that’s the side that he’s worked so hard on, just watching a bunch of the plays he made,” Happ said of Busch’s defense. “It’s really underrated for a first baseman the way they move around the bag, and there were a couple of throws today where he got his feet in the right position to stay on the base and make some big plays to get us out of innings.”

Busch said the chance to play consistently has helped him learn from mistakes and balls he should have gotten, and it’s helped him develop the specific skills like the footwork Happ mentioned.

“I don’t think there’s really one way to do it, but I wanted to get comfortable with it,” Busch said. “Being far off the base and getting back are pretty quick transitions sometimes, and just trying to get comfortable with it, and I think lately I’ve been at a point where I don’t really have to think about it much.”

If Hoyer sticks with the trade deadline plan he generally outlined Monday, look for deals like the one that brought Busch to the Cubs. And hope they work out as nicely, because those are the kinds of trades that supplement veterans like Happ and Swanson. 

The latter is in just the second season of a seven-year, $177 million contract, so even though Swanson is struggling at the plate this year, he will remain a part of the Cubs’ long-term future.

Happ is under team control through 2026, but he has a full no-trade clause. That doesn’t mean he can’t be traded at all, but he would have to approve any deal — something he’d seem unlikely to want to do.

“It allows them to control their destiny, so to speak, or their destination, ” Hoyer said of no-trade clauses. “So yeah, that’s always a challenge to navigate.”

Players with limited no-trade clauses (like Jameson Taillon‘s 10-team clause, according to Spotrac) have a deadline during the offseason — Hoyer said most are usually around five days after the World Series — to submit a list of teams they would not be open to being traded to in the upcoming year, and they can change that list each offseason.

But once it’s submitted in November, it cannot change until the following offseason. So as Hoyer is fielding calls in July, he’s already operating with the list of teams players with those clauses submitted over the winter.

But given Hoyer’s inclination toward building a competitive team in the near future, trading away guys like Happ or Swanson doesn’t make a lot of sense. What’s more likely is Hoyer will deal a few arms from his bullpen and work to help improve the offense that was tied for 24th in the league with a .233 team batting average going into Monday.

There’s still a small chance the Cubs make things hard for Hoyer at the end of this month by playing well. In July the Cubs are 10-7, and with Monday’s win over Milwaukee, they are one step closer to the winning streak Hoyer said they’d need to consider changing his approach to the trade deadline. But even if they do get hot in the days leading up to next Tuesday, it is tough to erase two months of poor play in May and June. 

“I think the next seven games obviously matter. Certainly, we saw what can happen last year, so you sort of never firmly plant your feet. You have to be able to be nimble,” Hoyer said. “But I think where we are right now, I would say that moves only for ’24, unless things change over the next week, I think we probably won’t do a lot of moves that only help us for this year.”

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