PITTSBURGH — Heading into last weekend, some of the old-guard Cubs laughed at breathless media reports declaring the upcoming series against their first-place rivals in St. Louis an indicator of what the front office might do in July at the trade deadline.
“We won the first game, and Rizz and some of us were all joking around that we’re buyers at the deadline now,” Cubs star Kris Bryant said, referring to teammate Anthony Rizzo. “And then we lost the next game, and now we’re sellers. And then [Sunday], we’re buyers.
“We’re riding the roller coaster, too, a little bit, but having fun with it. That’s really all we can do.”
A few more days on the roller coaster and the Cubs were in Pittsburgh, clinching their first winning road trip of the season with Wednesday’s 4-1 victory, staying within a half-game of the Cardinals in the National League Central and still laughing — without a damn clue what the front office’s plan is for the trade deadline, much less whether it'll dump or make more attempts to extend any of the three All-Star core guys who can become free agents this year.
“We don’t know what the plan is going to be by the end of this year. We don’t know what it’s going to look like,” said ace Kyle Hendricks, who opened the road trip by beating the Cardinals and finishes the trip with a start Thursday in Pittsburgh.
“We know what the group is right now that we have, and we’re enjoying the hell out of it, every single day we come out here.”
Some of the laughing this trip was tempered by Nico Hoerner’s bad hamstring strain Tuesday night.
But Hendricks has regained his footing after a slow start. Bryant is playing like an MVP contender — with three more hits and two RBIs Wednesday. Closer Craig Kimbrel is moving up the all-time saves leaderboard on Hall of Fame track again. And even Trevor Williams reversed his season trend for a night Wednesday with his best six innings of the season.
Just like that the Cubs are 15-7 in May. And in a season that looks nothing like any of the previous six during the competitive window that began with Bryant’s 2015 rookie season, they could be in position to defy expectations as foils not only to the likes of the Cardinals and Dodgers but also when it comes to their own front office.
Bryant already is being called the best hitter on the projected midsummer trade market. Shortstop Javy Báez and Rizzo are the other core free agents who could fall into that category if team president Jed Hoyer can justify a selloff with a roster of short-timers built for it.
On the other hand, what if they make that impossible to justify or play just well enough to make a decision like that painful?
In fact, in conversations during the road trip with NBC Sports Chicago, that’s exactly how players said they're approaching the season these days — as a fight to keep the core together for another week or month at a time, to make it tough on the front office to do anything else.
“Make it uncomfortable,” Bryant said.
“We can’t control what is being said or what any of the front offices do or any of that,” he added during a wide-ranging conversation Wednesday in Pittsburgh. “But if we do win, it’s going to be hard to make any changes.”
“That’s what I want,” Hoyer said. “I think we’re on the same wavelength. The difficult [call] is simply being in the situation where you’re in between.”
But where is the line drawn between deciding the team's competitive enough to buy at the deadline or squishy enough to justify selling even if the record might not look bad? Too soon to make that call, Hoyer says.
Consider that in 2017, Hoyer’s predecessor (and then boss), Theo Epstein, said he was within perhaps one bad week from selling at the deadline after the team reached the All-Star break two games under .500 and 5 1/2 games out of first.
That was eight months after winning the World Series. And that 2017 team wound up winning the division and its first-round playoff series.
So good luck predicting or thinking too far out what might be next for any of this team.
“We have a very limited focus with it,” Hendricks said. “We know what the situation is.”
Said Hoerner: “The focus is on being present, being here this year, and knowing that these [core] guys are on the field right now and how special that is.”
Whether the owners of one of the richest revenue-producing franchises in sports will pay any of them to stay beyond July or this fall is another matter.
Which leaves them playing for themselves and for the right to continue playing together one series and one week at a time.
“You look at our division, and it’s there to be had,” Bryant said. “That’s obviously a good spot to be in, if you want to keep the team together. But at the same time, it’s just been going on for so long now.”
All the uncertainty and the talk of trading guys. All the talk about building the “next” championship core. The lowballing Rizzo on an extension offer during the spring.
It’s not lost on many of these players that the brass might be underestimating what it will take to replace the talent level it seems to have treated with ambivalence in recent years.
“The saying of ‘you don’t really know what you have until it’s gone,’ I think that very much does apply,” Bryant said. “But if that’s the direction that the team wants to go, then you have to respect that, too, to an extent.”
He and Hendricks and Rizzo and the rest are done guessing what’s next for the core collectively or individually.
“Maybe the front office didn’t think we would do this, that our offense would be like this,” Bryant said. “But, hey, right now we’re doing it, and we’re enjoying it. And maybe we’ll prove them wrong.”
And maybe that will keep them together a few months longer. Or maybe not.
But roller coasters are called thrill rides for a reason. And these guys insist that embracing all the water under all the bridges they’ve crossed together has made it even easier to laugh as they take what might be their last, speeding, careening ride together.
“It just feels really good in the [clubhouse] right now,” Hendricks said. “And wherever the road goes with everybody, that’s where it goes.
“But we’re happy every single day that we have everybody together.”
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