A Preemptive Strike Against the Cubs

I will do my best to not be too harsh in this post, but it will be hard. Coming into this season I, along with every other person in baseball outside of St. Louis figured the Cubs would win the NL Central without much issue. I went as far as to point out a number of things that would have to happen for the Cubs to not win the division, and they all are happening. Injuries have ravaged the Cubs, and even with Big Z coming back there is no hope. 

Aramis Ramirez is the key to the middle of the order, and it is starting to show. He won't be back for a long time. Even when he does come back it will take another two weeks for him to adjust to major league pitching and odds are his power won't be what it was for a while. This injury is really making the trade of Mark DeRosa look that much stupider. I can't wait to watch more of Ryan Freel and Mike Fontenot playing third base, while Aaron Miles and his .566 OPS man second. What a joke. 

First base is occupied by Derrek Lee, former all star who has become a shell of himself. Meanwhile Micah Hoffpauir has proved to me that he needs to play as much as possible. Lee can't hit, and Hoffpauir can.

The outfield is set, but still concerning. I don't care about Soriano, nothing about him will ever change, and I don't want it to. I still love Milton Bradley the person and the quote machine, but again his play is leaving something to be desired. Luckily he knows it and odds are he goes on a tear soon and settles around .280 for the season. I'm getting real concerned with Fukudome, it's about that time of year, and the Fuku-copter is out again. As I write that sentence he drives in the first Cubs run of the game. The fact remains, you have to be worried about him falling off the cliff again. 

This offense is pathetic, notice I didn't talk about the fat one year powerless wonder, that's because I can't write my thoughts about him without swearing up a storm. There might not be a way to fix it either, I would expect a race to the wild card post sometime this weekend while I watch the Padres beat up the worthless piece of crap that is the Cubs offense.