CHICAGO — For much of 2025, the narrative surrounding the Chicago Cubs’ season hasn’t wavered.

It was the offense that so often seemed to take center stage — whether that was because the hitters were hitting, or because they weren’t.

Watch Jed Hoyer’s full end-of-season press conference only on the Marquee Sports Network app.

With the Cubs, it was a tale of two halves. The team was lethal in the season’s initial months, exploding for 5.33 runs per game as it rode red-hot streaks from Kyle Tucker and Pete Crow-Armstrong.

But after the midsummer classic, that production dipped massively to the tune of 4.26 runs per contest.

The results displayed just that: A .594 winning percentage pre-All-Star break versus a .530 clip on the back stretch of the season can easily be chalked up to the offense going cold. The Cubs’ lineup got fewer base hits, they slugged far less and they got on base less.

For Jed Hoyer, that’s often just how baseball goes.

“To be honest with you, last year we sat here and we had a great second half offensively,” the team’s president of baseball operations said at his end-of-season press conference last week. “I think some of that stuff is random — when guys are hot and when they’re not.

“If you look at the totality, we had a really excellent offensive team. We did have some struggles in the second half —  we had a collection of players in the first half at the same time who were playing exceptionally well, and then some of those same players struggled in the second half.”

To Hoyer’s point, several Cubs put together their best individual offensive seasons in 2025 despite how the second half shook out. Michael Busch (34), Seiya Suzuki (32) and Crow-Armstrong (31) each clubbed over 30 home runs, all of which were career-highs. Suzuki’s 103 RBI tied him for the 11th-most in MLB, while Busch’s .866 OPS was 12th-best. Nico Hoerner’s 178 hits were a career high and the sixth most in MLB.

Over 162 games, the Cubs’ offensive numbers evened out: Their 4.90 runs per game was the fifth-best in MLB. It’s their best number relative to the rest of the league since 2017, when their 5.07 runs per game ranked them fourth. And in the end, the team as a whole was one of three NL clubs to be nominated for a Silver Slugger Award for its offensive excellence.

Recency bias certainly affected how the Cubs’ offense was viewed, especially after the NL Division Series Game 5 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers. Chicago struggled to capitalize on its best opportunities in the playoffs, going just 5-for-40 (.125) with runners in scoring position — the second-worst clip in the postseason field and only just behind their NL Wild Card Series opponent, the San Diego Padres.

“I don’t think that’s indicative of anything, if I’m being honest. It’s eight baseball games against two of the best pitching staffs in baseball,” Hoyer said of the Cubs’ playoff offense. “You’re not getting the matchups you’re going to normally get during the season because of the nature of the postseason. So I think drawing big conclusions based on eight games against really good teams is probably not the best.”

There’s also the question of how Wrigley Field plays as a hitter’s ballpark. Historically, it’s been a pitcher’s paradise. Per Statcast’s Park Factor — a metric that measures how hitters perform at each MLB stadium relative to the rest of the league — Wrigley has been one of the five most difficult offensive ballparks over the past three seasons. The wind often blew in this season, perhaps causing difficulties to first-year Cubs like Tucker. Tucker saw his offensive numbers at home take a dip compared to on the road — a .723 OPS at Wrigley versus a .923 OPS in away games tells part of the story.

“The fact that a left-handed hitter struggled in a given year here isn’t indicative that left-handed hitters can’t perform here,” Hoyer said. “Michael Busch is a left-handed hitter and he hit a ton of homers. Pete (Crow-Armstrong) had a lot of homers at home. I think Cody (Bellinger) had great numbers at Wrigley in 2023 and he struggled in 2024.”

Hoyer made it clear that, despite Tucker’s 2025 splits, he doesn’t subscribe to the idea of the park factor at Wrigley deterring free agent hitters from signing with the Cubs — whether that’s Tucker or anyone else.

“I don’t really understand the focus on the ballpark. I’ve been here for 14 years. It’s been a mix of seasons,” Hoyer said. “The idea that somehow Wrigley Field is a hitter’s nightmare, the idea that free agents aren’t going to play here, or hitters aren’t going to come here —  I can’t imagine a better place to play. So that’s something I just kind of reject outright. I think there’s some randomness we’re dealing with here.”

Hoyer emphasized the importance of building a lineup suited for whatever comes its way — which is part of what led the team to its most successful season in years.

“We have to be a little bit of a Swiss Army knife of an offense, because we don’t know what our environment is night to night, and that’s every year,” Hoyer said. “We have to have players who can beat you in a lot of different ways. And I think we have that right now.”