Cubs Rumors: Fire sale looming, Marcus Stroman extension talk and a trade suitor

Cubs Rumors: Players know they’re running out of time

The Cubs went 4-6 on their recent west coast road trip, which would normally be a blip on the radar of a long MLB season. Yet, Chicago is now nine games under .500, making it all the more likely that Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins pull the plug on some pieces of this team’s core at the deadline. Marcus Stroman, for one, may already have one foot out the door.

This is not lost on the players. The Cubs reside in the NL Central, so there’s always a chance they could turn things around in the next week or so and make a run up the division standings. For now, though, they are 6.5 games back and behind the Pirates, Brewers and Reds.

Nico Hoerner, for one, understands the implications of the deadline. Every game counts double from here until late July.

"“We say all the cliches about trusting the process and the season playing out over 162,” Hoerner said, per The Athletic. “The season is cut shorter, in a lot of ways, by the trade deadline, as we’ve seen the last couple years. That’s significant. Saying and doing all the right things is nice. But at a certain point, it is a production league…I do like the tone of how people have talked the last week or so. For a long time, it was, ‘Stick it out, stay positive, this and that.’ That’s all real, and I’m all for it. But there’s also a level of just kind of competing your ass off.”"

Many players on the Cubs roster have been through this before — as recently as last season, in fact. To Hoyer’s credit, he did not deal Willson Contreras and Ian Happ, instead shopping smaller pieces and retaining some of the team’s top talent. Happ remains a Cub, signed to a long-term extension earlier this year.

Is another fire sale looming? It’ll largely depend on the team’s performance over the next month.