Catching up with the Cubs - Another Cubs Blog

To get Washington fans ready for the coming baseball season, all spring (err...and Winter) I will be interviewing a blogger from each team in the league. To continue our journey I talked with Mercurial Outfielder from Another Cubs Blog, one of the top Cubs blogs on the net. The Cubs are constantly looking towards next year, so lets take a look at what Another Cubs Blog says about this coming season:

The Nats Blog: Can the Cubs compete for that elusive World Series Title in 2010? Why?

Mercurial Outfielder: In a word, no. I mean, there's always some minuscule statistical chance that they could contend, but there's no reason to expect them to do so.  The reason, simply put, is that the talent just isn't there.  At the start of the 2009 season, by our WAR calculations, the Cubs were a 92-95 win team on paper, depending on if we used Rally's WAR or Fangraphs WAR. OF course, that didn't pan out, and I think the 2010 offseason has seen a classic case of over-general managing. The Cubs let 4-6 wins walk out the door when they refused to re-sign Harden and traded Bradley, and they haven't really replaced them. Marlon Byrd is the biggest acquisition so far, and even the most optimistic projections have him ~2 WAR. Moving Fukudome to RF helps defensively, as Fukudome is an excellent defensive RF, but having his bat in the lineup every day doesn't do much for me. Soriano is...well, who knows? He was having a typical Soriano season until mid-May when he smashed into a wall and banged up his knee, but I think there's a lot of uncertainty there. If we can chalk up his struggles to the injury, then there's some reason to be optimistic about a return to form--but I'm not sure we can really do that.  There's a very good chance that Soriano will never again be the offensive force he was when the Cubs acquired him.  Having a healthy Ramirez back helps, and Lee looks resurgent, but Baker is, IMO, a big question mark at 2B. A lot is riding on him continuing to hit.  As for the rotation, Zambrano, outside of the completely useless W-L stat, had a pretty typical season in 2009. Dempster should continue to be steady. Lilly's coming off a shoulder injury, so trying to project him, is, IMHO, an exercise in futility.

And here's where the real problems with this team start.