Cubs Woes

The Chicago Cubs have suffered through yet another year of pitching woes. Kerry Wood and Mark Prior have been on the DL, once again, for virtually the whole year. When you add the other many and assorted pitching injuries to the list, it does indeed look like a hard luck season.

However, what gets lost in the shuffle is that the Cubs are also the worst hitting team in the National league. Yes, Derek Lee, one of baseball’s premier hitters, has been out for a significant part of the season, but it stretches credulity and patience to believe his presence would have turned an abysmal hitting team into a marginally respectable hitting team.

As a die hard Cub fan, I can’t help speculating about what we are going to do next year. Anybody of any consequence on the team doesn’t represent much trade bait. The best you can hope for is that you end up at the status quo from any significant trade. The young hitters and pitchers are an unknown quantity. How do you assess a young pitcher when they get no run support from their team?

When you review the Cubs wins per dollar of player salary over the years, they must be about the worst team in baseball in that regard. The Cubs might realistically be three years away from respectability again. The price of ignominy comes very high, or higher than what you could reasonably expect.

Now that I’ve said that, I might wait another three years before thinking about the whole situation again. It is too depressing on a rainy day such as today, that’s for sure.