The Chicago Cubs: Mediocrity At Its Finest

At the All-Star break, the "NL Favorites" stand at a 43-43 record.

With the expectations and the payroll that this team has, there should be no reason why this team shouldn't be in first place right? I mean yes, we did have key injuries to Rich Harden (who has been the weakest starter so far) Aramis Ramirez, Reed Johnson, Angel Guzman, and the latest victims Geovany Soto and Ryan Dempster. There have also been minor injuries to other players as well.

By no means though should this lead to a team that was near the top of the league in every offensive category to just not hit, literally at all. We still had our fire at the top of the order in Soriano and Theriot, and Derrek Lee wasn't hurt. We also had our rookie of the year All-Star catcher in for most of the season and our "fantastic" offseason acquisition Milton Bradley.

A team of this calibur should not be hitting .247 as A TEAM. Good for 28th in the league. 28th in Stolen Bases at 32 (which means Carl Crawfor and other players are single handedly stealing more bases than our entire team). Keep this in mind, the Tampa Bay Rays have 133 SBs and 30 CS. We have 19 CS. Tampa has only 11 more CS than the Cubs but have stolen 100 more bases. We have also gotten much less patient at the plate as we went from the top of the league in walks to now 17th in the majors.

If there is anything positive we can say about the Cubs, it is their pitching. Their team ERA stands at 5th in the league and as Cub pitching usually does, is in the top 5 in strikeouts. And after a shaky start for the bullpen, guys like Aaron Heilman (aside from his horrible outing against St. Louis) and Kevin Gregg have started pitching pretty well. Marmol remains the guy I worry about just for his lack of control. He seems to get flustered very easily (almost Carlos Zambranoesque) and hopefully the All-Star break helps calm him down.

I guess what I am trying to convey is that if the Cubs pitch anywhere close to the way they did in the first half, I think the Cubs still have a great chance to win this division. The fact that they could have been 1.5 games out if they swept the double header yesterday is almost maddening. A team that has averaged a little over 4 runs a game with all of the talent that they have. The upside is that there is only room for improvement. With this long extended break, I think Soriano's knee will heal, as well as everybody else's nagging injuries. The Cubs will get healthy and produce. I think they should make a trade (whether it is for another lefty bullpen arm or a prolific stolen base threat) but I wouldn't be angry if they just let Sam Fuld, Jake Fox and Andres Blanco play up here for awhile. All of them look like they have tremendous upside and can play just about everywhere.

In the end, the Cubs will win this division, albeit not by much but it's not how much you win by, it is just a matter of winning. This is a division that could be won by an 82-80 team. And for the Cubs, that is only 2 games higher than where they sit right now at .500.