Jed Hoyer had fielded the questions numerous times throughout the summer and as the offseason kicked off.

“How will you address the Cubs’ need for a star player?”

It was the biggest query that Hoyer faced in his most pivotal offseason as the head of the Cubs’ baseball operations. But it’s not an easy problem to solve. Star players — or players with a high consolidation of Wins Above Replacement (WAR), as he calls them — don’t just grow on trees.

Then, as he returned from last month’s General Managers Meetings in San Antonio, Texas, Hoyer learned the answer might reside in the state he had just left. The Astros, and general manager Dana Brown, were at a crossroads themselves, facing a few players entering their last year of club control and wanting to restock and compete in the AL West.

[MORE: Kyle Tucker on possible extension talks with Cubs: ‘I’m open to anything’]

“We sort of missed each other when we were in San Antonio and then we talked on the phone and he mentioned to me that [Kyle] Tucker could potentially be available,” Hoyer said Tuesday afternoon on a Zoom call.

They continued to talk in the weeks following the GM Meetings. But last week’s Winter Meetings helped expedite the process. The framework for the deal began to take shape and the price was sorted out in the days after the yearly offseason event.

It wouldn’t be cheap to acquire Tucker — a star player who has been one of the premier performers in the game.

But the Cubs felt they had the right pieces to pull off the type of deal necessary to acquire him.

Days before the trade deadline in July, Hoyer and the Cubs had pulled off another swap, one that they felt had netted them their third baseman of the future in Isaac Paredes. The righty was leaving Tampa Bay to join the team he had originally signed with as a minor-league free agent as a teenager.

Even after just acquiring him, though, Hoyer had fielded calls from other teams — including Houston — about Paredes, looking to acquire the newest Cub ahead of the July trading deadline. The Astros, it was reported, had finished second to the Cubs for the Mexican third baseman and still were interested, knowing that his pull-heavy approach would work well in Houston with the 315-foot Crawford Boxes in left field.

[READ: A glimpse at the Cubs lineup with Kyle Tucker in the mix]

As talks intensified in the offseason for Tucker, Hoyer realized he had his bargaining chip.

But Paredes wouldn’t be enough on his own. And the Cubs and Astros continued to work out a deal, one that eventually included the third baseman, right-handed pitcher Hayden Wesneski and 2024 1st-round pick Cam Smith, ensuring Tucker would don blue pinstripes in 2025.

“It comes at a real price, but it’s a price we’re willing to pay given the fact that was something we felt all summer that we lacked and something we really wanted to bring to this team,” Hoyer said.

In 2024, the Cubs won 83 games for the second season in a row, missing out on the playoffs for the fourth straight year. The roster that Hoyer and his front office had so meticulously built since trading away the core of the 2016 championship team had resulted in a solid team, but one very much teetering in the middle — not bad enough to stockpile for the future and not good enough to throw punches in October.

Yes, Hoyer is entering the last year of his contract as president of baseball operations. But he denied that played a role in acquiring Tucker. They wanted to improve the team and get back in the playoffs and knew what had to be done.

They needed a star. They needed a high WAR player. They needed Tucker.

“I think, going back to ‘21-‘22, it wouldn’t have made sense to do this [kind of] deal,” Hoyer said. “I think that it made a lot of sense for us to do it with where we are right now, given the players around and given the construction of a roster.”

If it sounds or feels like a lot of pressure, Tucker isn’t showing it. After spending 10 seasons in the Astros organization — and spending it at a time when they were arguably the standard in baseball — he’s ready to try and lead the Cubs to that level of success and prove why Hoyer and the Cubs felt he was their guy.

“In Houston, as a team, our expectation has been winning our division, getting to the playoffs and winning [the] World Series,” Tucker said. “ I think the mindset, regardless of what team you’re on, should always be going out there every single day and winning every single game … I’m not going to show up just to go out there and play and lose. Like, if I’m going to show up, we might as well win.

“That’s kind of the mindset I’ve taken into every game, every single day, and try and kind of express that throughout the team as well. That kind of how the vibe and our clubhouse has been in Houston, and I’m hoping to try and replicate that the exact same way in Chicago, so I’m excited to just get after it with them.”