Halfway across the world, president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer followed the Chicago Cubs’ toughest loss of the season on his phone.

Hoyer spent five days in Japan to scout, most notably getting eyes on Orix Buffaloes star right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 25, who is expected to be posted in the offseason. The overseas trip had been planned for a while so the Cubs can keep an eye on the future as they try to get back into the postseason for the first time since 2020.

“It’s a great baseball culture and obviously they have a lot of really good players and making sure that’s a market that we are actively involved in is something that’s really important,” Hoyer said Tuesday.

The timing left Hoyer following from the ballpark’s scout seats Sunday morning in Toyko, 16 hours ahead of the Cubs’ 13-inning marathon that culminated in a gut-punching 7-6 walk-off loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“It was not one of my gold star moments,” Hoyer said, laughing. “I got on a flight later and I was still sort of staring ahead on the plane afterward to kind of think through that game because it felt like there was just so many moments of that game that felt like we were about to win and then something would happen.

“Sometimes you try to remember we’ve had some good fortune along the way when we have a game like that where it just feels like everything went against us and we couldn’t get any break,” Hoyer added. “We’ve gotten some breaks along the way and hopefully we get some more. But that one took longer to recover from the most.”

The extra-innings defeat was the defining sequence of a 1-5 road trip to Colorado and Arizona, part of a five-game losing streak the Cubs carried into …read more

Source:: The Denver Post