Despite the number of key Cubs who will be in the final season of their contracts in 2026, the situation isn’t comparable to 2021, when the team couldn’t come to terms with any of its core players facing free agency at the end of that season, then sold at the trade deadline.
President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer made clear at MLB’s general managers meetings last week in Las Vegas that the Cubs will be active this offseason.
And even if their plans to build on their playoff appearance this past season go awry, they aren’t in danger of undergoing the kind of full-scale rebuild they initiated 4½ years ago.
‘‘We had higher goals [in 2025],’’ Hoyer said Wednesday of the Cubs’ National League Division Series exit. ‘‘You try to figure out, ‘What are the best ways to fill our holes? What are the best ways to add depth in the most intelligent way possible?’ ’’
That process will take the whole picture into consideration.
Barring extensions, right fielder Seiya Suzuki, left fielder Ian Happ, second baseman Nico Hoerner and right-hander Jameson Taillon’s contracts will be up after next season. Left-hander Matthew Boyd and catcher Carson Kelly also might be facing free agency if their mutual options for 2027 aren’t picked up.
Some of that alignment was by design. The Cubs kept the end of the 2022-26 collective-bargaining agreement in mind while structuring recent multiyear deals.
‘‘Anytime you get toward the end of a CBA, it becomes a source of conversation,’’ Hoyer said. ‘‘I don’t know yet how much it’s going to impact [the offseason markets]; I don’t think anyone here does. It could have an impact, it could have no impact. It’ll be something people think about because you have to.’’
Uncertainty was the theme of team officials’ comments about the expiring CBA at the GM meetings.
Debate about a potential salary cap, which the players long have fought against, likely will be the main point of contention in what’s expected to be a tense bargaining period. The industry is bracing for a work stoppage after the CBA expires next winter.
So far, it’s unclear whether anxiety about an uncertain future landscape will affect the kinds of deals teams are willing to offer or players are willing to accept. Either way, the Cubs are looking to lay a foundation that won’t crumble, regardless of how things play out.
It’s a tough needle to try to thread, and there isn’t a guarantee they’ll do it successfully. But this also isn’t 2021. The differences boil down to timing, player development and financial picture.
The Cubs are in a much different point in their competitive window than they were going into 2021. They just ended a four-year playoff drought, whereas the 2021 season was about trying to get what they could out of the 2016 World Series core.
In contrast to 2021, the Cubs also have a strong group of contributors who haven’t even reached arbitration yet.
Center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, who on Thursday officially joined Team USA for the World Baseball Classic, finished ninth in NL MVP voting and was named to the All-MLB second team.
First baseman Michael Busch and third baseman Matt Shaw established themselves as everyday-caliber players. Right-hander Cade Horton carried the rotation after the All-Star break. Right-hander Daniel Palencia served as the closer for much of the season. If Miguel Amaya can stay healthy, he has shown he’s ready to be the primary catcher.
‘‘We feel better about our draft process, we feel better about our pro acquisition process,’’ general manager Carter Hawkins said. ‘‘We continue to feel better and good about our development process. So the idea is, you’re building that up to where you’re continually getting new guys coming up and impacting the major leagues.’’
The Cubs are expected to engage several players in extension conversations, and position-player prospects Moises Ballesteros, Owen Caissie and Kevin Alcantara have gotten their first tastes of the big leagues and are ready to build off that experience.
Back in 2021, the pandemic had shifted the financial landscape of the industry. When the Cubs traded right-hander Yu Darvish to the Padres before the season, it foreshadowed the moves to come.
Hoyer has declined to comment about the Cubs’ budget this offseason, not even revealing whether it would expand from what it was in 2025. But if chairman Tom Ricketts’ regular insistence that the revenue from the previous season determines the baseball budget holds true, the Cubs’ playoff revenue might give them more financial flexibility.
‘‘I don’t look at it as a cause for concern,’’ Hoyer said of the Cubs’ clean books after 2026. ‘‘I try to look at it as an opportunity. We have available dollars in the future that we haven’t committed yet, and we just need to continue to commit those dollars wisely as we do commit them.’’