The cost to improve was high? You don't say.

Jed Hoyer apologists (the fact that such a thing exists, is kind of sad) have finally come around to their agreed upon excuse for why the Cubs let the deadline pass without trading for the one thing they really, really, really needed. Another starting pitcher, preferably one they would have for multiple years.

That excuse is very nuanced. "Nobody else got one!"

It is true that none of the oft-rumored to be changing teams starters like Sandy Alcantara, Edward Cabrera, Mackenzie Gore, Dylan Cease, Mitch Keller or or Mitch Keller were dealt. GMs around the league echoed Jed's lament that "the prices were too damned high."

I hear that.

And...

The fact that nobody was willing to meet any of those teams' prices should have been an opportunity for Jed. He, allegedly built this team to win right now. There's no guarantee that Kyle Tucker will be around next year (I guess we're still pretending he might?), and so what did you do any of this for? If you were willing to risk it all in December for Tucker, why are you no longer willing to do it now? You clearly weren't seeing the bidding go up. Be the one to pay the damn price.

Why, a skeptic might just assume that you felt you needed to do something uncharacteristically bold to save your job, and then once you got your new deal you went right back to being afraid of your own tiny shadow.

Huh.

The reality is that the Tucker move was so unlike anything else Jed has done as Cubs' GM that while we were hoping he'd evolved, he clearly hadn't.

The Jed Hoyer Cubs are built on a foundation of middling free agents. Most of whom are former number one draft picks and almost all of them are boring white dudes.