But so far, Hendry’s busy offseason hasn’t gone according to plan. While you can’t lay all the blame on him, considering how bad the Cubs’ hitting has been and all the injuries they’ve had to deal with, he deserves his fair share.
With all that said though, it’s only May 26. There’s plenty of time to turn things around. Cubs fans might be panicking right now, but here are 10 reasons why they shouldn’t be.
10. 2007 season
On June 2nd of that year, the Cubs’ record was 22-31. The team was a mess, Lou Piniella was wondering just what he had gotten himself into, and everyone pretty much wrote them off. This Cubs team is a lot better than the ’07 one. It’s a veteran group that understands divisions aren’t decided in April/May.
9. Return of Aramis Ramirez
Who knows when Ramirez will come back, but boy have the Cubs missed his bat in the lineup. At the beginning of the year, Cubs fans knew the one guy they could ill afford to lose for an extended period of time was Ramirez. When he does return, hopefully sometime around the All-Star break, it’s not likely you’ll see the Cubs go through another six-game stretch where they score a total of five runs, like they did this past week.
8. A little adversity might not be a bad thing
Last season, on their way to 97 wins, the Cubs faced no real adversity from April to September. They led the division from early May on, and had only three losing streaks of three games or more. The pressure of going into the playoffs as heavy favorites clearly got to the Cubs, and we saw what happened against the Dodgers.. Being tested this early in the season and having to fight through the dreaded “underachievers” label in May might not turn out to be a bad thing in the end.
7. Lou Piniella
Other than his three years in Tampa Bay, where he was put into an impossible situation, Piniella has won everywhere he has been. He won’t panic or get too worked up about one bad stretch in May, because he knows he’s got a veteran team that is accustomed to dealing with high expectations. But at the same time, Piniella won’t be afraid to start getting on guys who aren’t producing. I just have a hard time seeing a pretty talented team managed by one of the game’s best not figuring things out eventually.
6. Derrek Lee, Milton Bradley and Geovany Soto should all start to hit
If they don’t, well, then the Cubs are in real trouble. Lee has picked it up of late, raising his batting average over .50 points in the last two weeks. Soto, who came into spring training way out of shape, doesn’t figure to keep struggling when you consider that he hit .285 with 23 home runs and 86 RBI last year. As far as Bradley, I hated the signing at the time, so you can imagine what my feelings are right now. Still, Bradley won’t keep hitting under .200 all season. And don’t forget about Mike Fontenot. He showed last season, albeit in a utility role, that he is a solid hitter, so his .208 average should start to rise.
5. Starting pitching
Before last night’s disaster, Cubs starters had the sixth best ERA in the National League at 4.11. While Ryan Dempster hasn’t been nearly as good as last year, he’s still been solid (with the exception of last night), as has Ted Lilly and Sean Marshall. Randy Wells has also had three great starts. The key will be if Carlos Zambrano can start pitching like he did for the first four months of last season. It might not be one of the league’s top rotations anymore, but it’s still good enough for the Cubs to stay in contention all summer.
4. No dominant team in the NL Central
This is shaping up to be a three-team race between the Cardinals, Brewers and Cubs (the Reds don’t have much staying power). The Cardinals and Brewers both have some major flaws, just like the Cubs. Outside of Yovani Gallardo, the Brewers starting pitching is very weak, and Rickie Weeks is out for the year with a wrist injury. The Cardinals are a solid team, better than the Brewers, but their lineup after Albert Pujols and Ryan Ludwick is questionable, and Chris Carpenter is more unreliable than Zambrano or Rich Harden. It will take more than the 85 wins with which the Cubs won the division with in ’07, but it’s not like the teams in front of the Cubs are clearly superior.
3. Everything that could go wrong has already gone wrong
Even when the Cubs were 21-14 before their road trip from hell, they weren’t playing very good baseball. You figured that the baseball gods wouldn’t be as kind to them this year, and they haven’t been. Ramirez, Zambrano, Lee, Harden and Bradley have all missed time due to injury. Breaks that the Cubs got last year haven’t gone their way so far this season (the Cubs are 2-7 in one-run games). The lineup has been a mess, with Fukudome the only regular hitting over .300. And yet where do the Cubs sit this morning? One game below .500, five games out of first. Not bad when you consider all that has gone wrong.
2. The hitters should come around eventually
Like Lou Piniella said after last Saturday’s game when asked about the team’s offensive struggles: “We’ll get out of this. We’ve done it before. Are we the best offensive team in the National League? Absolutely not. Are we down at the absolute bottom? No. We’ve got to basically find our medium somewhere, and we will. It’s just a question of when and how soon.” After leading the National League in runs scored, batting average and on-base percentage last season, the Cubs rank in the bottom five in the NL in all those categories this year.
1. Who cares?
Didn’t we learn our lesson last fall? Cubs fans put their heart and soul into the team for six months, only to have it all end in four days in October. What’s the point of ever again getting too high or too low during the regular season if you’re a Cubs fan? You know the team is just going to disappoint you in the end anyway. Panic if Jay Cutler fails to meet expectations or if Derrick Rose tears his ACL playing in a pickup game over the summer. But don’t waste time and energy worrying about the state of the Cubs. It’s just not worth it.
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