Because of the timing of the Blogathon ending, and then the weekend of trying to recover physically, there are some things I haven’t yet had a chance to share here. You may have already seen some of these quotes from Cubs President Jed Hoyer, but in case you hadn’t, they are important enough that I wanted to put them up. As we know, the Cubs did not achieve their most obvious goal for Thursday’s Trade Deadline: add an impactful, sure-fire starting pitcher. I wrote up my thoughts on that failing here, and they stand. But I do want to at least allow for Hoyer to offer an explanation for why things shook out the way they did. Among his quotes: “Ultimately, we made the decision that those prices didn’t make sense for us to be sustainably successful. And I think the market sort of said that no one else did either. We weren’t the only team that was in that market. A lot of teams needed a starting pitcher. And the fact that everyone sort of made the same decision, it kind of tells you that the team that had those starting pitchers, they really value them.” (The Score) “It’s hard to draft and develop or have a starting pitcher like that under control. So, I think when teams do, rightfully, they expect a massive return to do it. We made that decision organizationally that was not the right thing for us. And the fact that none of those guys changed hands indicated that we weren’t alone.” (The Score) “It was a tight starting pitching market — very few rental starters. Obviously, a lot of time, energy and focus was on controllable starters — the guys that everybody’s been talking about. Ultimately, none of those guys moved. We didn’t match their price, but no one else did either.” (Marquee) “[Cade Horton] came up with some trade discussions, and, you know, to trade a guy like him with his amount of control to get a guy with less control, it didn’t make a lot of sense — with a bunch of other pieces as well.” (Marquee) “It was a really tight market. Of the marquee controllable starters, none of those guys changed hands. We didn’t acquire them, and no one else did, either. Obviously, we felt like the asking price was something that we couldn’t do to the future.” (The Athletic) “Young players are the lifeblood of a team. A lot of those players are going to help us very soon. To give those guys away for guys only helping you for 10 starts or two months – ultimately, I think these guys are going to be Cubs for a long time and provide a ton of value.” (The Athletic) So, no real surprise here. The price tags associated with the controllable arms were so high that no team was willing to pay the price, which does lend some support to Hoyer’s position that it was not a good idea in the end. He’s not wrong if, for example, the ask on MacKenzie Gore was Horton plus Matt Shaw (as rumored) plus more. Even accounting for the potential extra value this season, with the Cubs already competitive, that’s just too steep of a price to make any sense. Moreover, it sounds like he’s suggesting that even the price on quality rentals would’ve been much higher than folks had been thinking (i.e., a prospect or two from the very top of the farm system – which, by the way, tracks with the Guardians getting a Jaxon-Wiggins-equivalent prospect for Shane Bieber, which would’ve been a No Way in my book).