Might looming lockout spark early flurry of offseason activity as Cubs head to GM meetings in Las Vegas?

Nam Y. Huh/AP SHARE COPY LINK Share CLOSE Twitter Facebook Bluesky Email Reddit Flipboard Baseball’s GM meetings are rarely the site of big-money free-agent deals and blockbuster trades. But might this year’s edition, happening this week in Las Vegas, be different? With what’s expected to be a lengthy lockout looming, there’s a curiosity over whether these GM meetings could function more like the winter meetings, when all that wheeling and dealing typically takes place, a month later on the baseball calendar. Instead of merely setting the table for the offseason to come, though, might front offices across the sport treat this week as the starting gun for a sprint to the start of December, when baseball is expected to be forced into hibernation, all free-agent and trade activity placed on pause? Though he probably has a better idea of what’s to come than he did a month ago, when he held his end-of-season news conference far earlier than hoped, Cubs president Jed Hoyer has to navigate those waters as he looks to start checking items off his winter to-do list. “We’ll make the best decisions with the information we have at the time,” he said last month. “Some of those may come before Dec. 1, and some may come after. But I don’t think anyone, at this point, has a firm grasp on that. If they say they do, they’re probably incorrect.” The last time baseball endured a work stoppage, between the 2021 and 2022 seasons, there was a lot of free-agent activity in November, with some pretty big contracts handed out leading up to the clock striking midnight and everything being put on hold. This week’s GM meetings could signal whether teams will operate similarly this time around, seeking security in what their rosters will look like, regardless of how negotiations over a collective-bargaining agreement play out. “If there are contracts that will make sense no matter the setup, then you make those deals,’’ Hoyer said. ‘‘There are certainly going to be contracts that make sense regardless of the structure. Knowing what is going to be after, you’re making a lot of assumptions. “But certainly there are deals, contracts, players that you would retain regardless of what that structure was.” Whether they get it all done before the buzzer sounds or after the lockout, whenever that might be, Hoyer & Co. have a lot of work to do. Chiefly, there’s remaking the Cubs’ pitching staff, the undoubted priority for the front office in the wake of a disappointing playoff exit. All five of the pitchers who finished the season in the rotation are free agents, and Hoyer was blunt in his assessment that his work to construct a bullpen last winter didn’t work, forecasting a makeover there, too. “It’s safe to say that the biggest part of our focus going into the offseason is going to be on pitching,” Hoyer said. “Whether that’s 100-to-0, what that ratio is going to be, has not been determined yet. But certainly, the great majority of our focus is going to be on pitching acquisition going in.” There are potential needs on the far more stable position-player side, too, with corner outfielders Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki — the latter got a qualifying offer from the Cubs last week — potentially departing as free agents. Over the last calendar year, Hoyer has not been shy about making win-now trades, shipping top prospects away in exchange for Edward Cabrera, Kevin Gausman and Clay Holmes. The latter two were acquired as trade-deadline rentals but didn’t help the Cubs even make it to October; the team was swept out of the wild-card round. But those were the kinds of bets Hoyer’s front office needed to make to push a team built to win toward championship contention. As expectations remain at the championship level, the question will be how much is left in the farm system to make similar deals? Should there not be enough to lure away top talent from other clubs, perhaps the coffers will have to open once again, the way they did to land Alex Bregman last offseason. Bregman proved worth every penny of his $175 million free-agent contract, awakening from a deep slump in dramatic enough fashion to finish as the Cubs’ second-best hitter and playing Gold Glove defense at third base. Those are the things Hoyer has done, and while he made the moves necessary to set the Cubs up for success, they didn’t equal success in the end. So it’s back to the drawing board to make the improvements that will not just get the Cubs another crack at the postseason but position them to challenge for division, league and MLB championships, an even taller task now that the division rival Brewers are kings of the baseball world. The quest for pitching likely already has begun for Hoyer & Co., and perhaps the hot stove gets flipped on a little early with the lockout on the way. We’ll find out this week. 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