Welcome back to the Cubs Beat newsletter. Jordan Bastian has covered baseball for MLB.com since 2005, including the Cubs since the 2019 season.

The bulk of the attention around the Cubs this offseason will center on the team’s pursuit of impact players to improve its postseason chances. Away from the Hot Stove, the front office also will be considering a handful of in-house extension possibilities.

The two players who most obviously fit the latter storyline are veteran left fielder Ian Happ (under contract through 2023) and shortstop Nico Hoerner (eligible for arbitration for the first time this winter). At his season-end press conference last month, president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said “first steps” had been taken on that front.

“I'm sure they've had the conversations internally. That's probably what he was referring to,” Happ said last week after winning his first career Gold Glove Award. “Maybe there'll be something down the road, but you know, it's their job to look at all possible outcomes and the way that that shapes their thinking for not only free agency and trades, but long term internally.”

First steps, in this case, have also included at least letting agents know that there is a desire from the Cubs’ side to engage in talks this offseason. And in a chat with Chicago reporters at the GM Meetings in Las Vegas this week, Hoyer also noted that his growing preference would be to have any extension negotiations over the offseason without having things trickle into Spring Training.

That would make salary arbitration talks the most logical time to also engage in potential extension scenarios with Happ and Hoerner, specifically. No, Hoyer is not setting any kind of hard deadlines, but his past experiences with negotiations during Spring Training has made the offseason seem like the more appropriate place on the calendar.

“Don’t hold me to this, but I don’t really love negotiating in Spring Training,” Hoyer said. “The more I do it, the more I think it causes real tension. Guys want to start the season. I’ve watched many deals fall apart in Spring Training. I just don’t think it’s a great way to start the season. I think I’d like to push that up a little bit. And if we get it done, great.”

Asked late last season about the idea of discussing an extension with the Cubs, Hoerner said: “I love being here. And I think being here from rebuild to the next great team, or whatever you want to call it, would be one of the coolest things you can do in a career. It’d be incredibly satisfying. I love Chicago.”

Happ, who is coming off an All-Star campaign in which he played elite defense in left and posted arguably his best all-around offensive season, has made his desire to stay in Chicago no secret. He reiterated that again in his chat with local media last week in the wake of his Gold Glove victory.

“I've always been really upfront about the fact that I love it here,” Happ said. “Just putting together a whole year, putting it together both on the offensive and defensive side, and the consistency from both sides of the plate, I think all those things give you a chance to be somewhere long term. And hopefully the value that you generate is appreciated by everybody.”

Over on Cubs.com, we covered three storylines to emerge from the offseason-opening GM Meetings. Give that story a read for some information on Matt Mervis’ chances of competing for the first-base job, Chicago’s view of its catching situation and more. Here are a couple more takeaways from this week.

• Hoyer said he’s had “a lot of conversations” with outfielder Seiya Suzuki about potentially playing for Japan in the World Baseball Classic this spring. Said Hoyer: “It’s a great honor to be able to represent your country, and he's done that a couple of times in the Olympics and in the WBC, which is fantastic. What I want is the best for both worlds. I want him to be able to represent his country and I want him to have a really smooth Spring Training and get ready for the season. Hopefully we can accomplish both.”

• The Cubs will be in the market for help in center field, which is an area Hoyer said “was probably always most likely that we’d go outside” the organization. Setbacks to prospects Alexander Canario and Brennen Davis make adding external help for 2023 even more imperative.

• Hoyer said the Cubs will probably have some “small trade discussions” as the team weighs its upcoming 40-man roster crunch. Between reinstating players from the 60-day injured list and protecting players for the Rule 5 Draft, Chicago will have a number of transactions to make in the coming days.

• Asked how many MLB starting pitchers need to be added to the fold, Hoyer would only offer the following comments: “We need to add a lot of arms. I think you saw what happened when you run out. I don’t think we’re going to sort of stop [after just one]. We want to add a lot of arms and a lot of innings.”

With All-Star catcher Willson Contreras (signed by the Cubs out of Venezuela in 2009) hitting the free-agent market, which player on the Cubs is now the longest-tenured member of the ballclub?

A) David Bote
B) Kyle Hendricks
C) Adbert Alzolay
D) Justin Steele

During the GM Meetings, the Cubs announced the makeup of manager David Ross’ 2023 coaching staff, which includes the promotion of Dustin Kelly to Major League hitting coach. Kelly’s staff will include three assistant hitting coaches: Johnny Washington, Juan Cabreja and Jim Adduci.

Here is how Hoyer summed up the vision for the Cubs’ retooled hitting group:

“Our pitching coaches have various skill sets, and it's a total team effort. And that's what we want to create. What we want is a hitting department with different areas of strengths and ultimately everyone has a plan to make players better together. We want to have different people working on different things, whether it's one guy might be more of a mechanics person, one guy might be more game planning, the mental side. … I think that's really important in becoming more collaborative. We definitely have it on the pitching side right now and getting the hitting side to that place was really important to us."

“We do have a gap we have to close, and I certainly think some of that gap can be closed by raising our payroll back to where it was. We took it down for a couple years and we have to move it back up. That definitely helps close that gap, but we also know that a lot of that gap has to be closed with our internal guys.” -- Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, on the NL Central landscape

A) David Bote

The Cubs selected the utility man in the 18th round of the MLB Draft on June 6, 2012. Next on the list would be Hendricks, who was acquired from Texas via trade on July 31, 2012. Alzolay was signed out of Venezuela on Nov. 28, 2012, while Steele was a fifth-round pick in the 2014 Draft.

To subscribe to Cubs Beat, visit this page and mark "Cubs Beat" from our newsletter list. Make sure you're following the Cubs or that they're checked as your favorite team. 

View Online