MESA, Ariz. — Jed Hoyer, Carter Hawkins and the Cubs front office spent all offseason stockpiling arms.

Waiver claims, free agents or trades, if there was an upgrade to be made, they were willing and ready to fire on a deal.

It’s an approach they’ve taken since midway through the 2024 season when the bullpen was a bugaboo for the team.

“We just started to be a little bit more transactional,” Hawkins said at his press conference on Sunday morning. “We started to identify marginal upgrades and pull the trigger on those upgrades, whether it was waiver claims or those small trades, things of that nature.

“And I would expect that that will continue.”

[Watch the complete press conference with Jed Hoyer and Carter Hawkins]

Throughout the offseason, the Cubs seemingly raised the floor of their bullpen in smaller transactions — adding slightly better pitchers and subtracting from the bottom of their 40-man roster to do so. But, for the most part this offseason, the top of that bullpen remained the same.

Porter Hodge, who emerged as the team’s closer in his rookie campaign, Tyson Miller and Nate Pearson had pitched into manager Craig Counsell’s circle of trust. Right-handed pitcher Eli Morgan and left-handed pitcher Caleb Thielbar represented outside additions who could pitch in those roles, too. Plus, the team would be getting back righties Julian Merryweather and Ben Brown and lefty Luke Little from injury to supplement that group.

But the backend of the bullpen always looked prime for some improvement while the winter months dragged on. That was remedied in the weeks leading up to pitchers and catchers reporting on Sunday. The team pulled off another big trade with Houston to acquire All-Star closer Ryan Pressly and added righty Ryan Brasier in a deal with the Dodgers.

“I think the one thing we’ve added is experience in the bullpen for sure,” Counsell said on Sunday. “I think in general just … the depth of the pitching list in camp is in a really good place.”

[Ryan Pressly shares his thoughts on reuniting with Alex Bregman]

Of course, it doesn’t mean all their issues from last year are solved. At this time in 2024, Adbert Alzolay was returning after emerging as the team’s closer, key relievers Mark Leiter Jr. and Merryweather were returning and the team had added veteran Héctor Neris — a key reliever for the Astros — via free agency.

Alzolay struggled from Opening Day, suffered an injury and underwent Tommy John surgery while Neris was inconsistent and struggled with command and Merryweather missed most of the year with injury.

“But bullpens are unpredictable,” Counsell said. “So we will have plans going into the start of spring and into the start of the season and those plans will change during the course of the season.

“And it will take more than the eight guys that start with us in Arizona. It’ll take more than that group. And I think that’s really the most important thing to always think about. when you think about bullpens.”

That’s where the depth aspect — the part the Cubs have been emphasizing all winter comes into focus. And they hope that will lead to avoiding some of the same issues that plagued them a year ago.

“It’s not just gonna come down to whether Pressly and Brasier can help us late in the game,” Hoyer said. “It’s gonna come down to a lot of different guys — some of those guys probably young, some of those guys probably old.

“But we really did try to focus on just the volume of good arms that we could put together. That was probably the biggest focus this offseason.”