These Cubs Are Harmless

(cue Jim Ross) "Good God!"

3 games in St. Louis. 2 runs. 0 wins. How bad would it suck to be Lou Piniella's wife right now? Do you think that she goes and stays with a sister during times like these? The Cubs offensive ineptitude has reached such lows that Sour Lou "jokingly" threw out the idea of playing Soriano at second to get Hoffpauir's bat in the lineup in left. I think he's actually kind of serious about it and just wanted to see if the reporters would bust a gut laughing in which case he could say he was kidding. Maybe I'm delusional, but that doesn't necessarily seem like a bad idea. Wasn't it just a few years back that Soriano was refusing to play the OF for the Nationals? Was he really that bad at second base?

Also, I keep hearing about how Jake Fox is raping AAA to the tune of a .425 BA, 17HR, 50RBI and a 1.439 OPS, but it's always followed by the caveat that he can't play defense so there's no place to put him. I've never seen the kid play so I'll have to take his defensive ineptitude at face value, but right now I'd gladly trade a couple of defensive miscues straight up for a couple of extra base hits. In the words of fellow bartender and avowed fake baker, The Hundley, "Baleedat".

Soto, Bradley and Fontenot are the worst offenders right now. I realize that everyone goes through slumps and you have to continue to play to work through them, but at some point (and we're reaching that point rapidly) you have to consider giving Hill, Hoffpauir and Scales some more PT at their expense until they can show that they deserve to be out there every day.

What it boils down to is that the Cubs are merely an average team right now. They don't have a lot of depth, the bullpen is sketchy and they couldn't hit their way out of a tee-ball tournament (round robin). There's still time to turn this around, but you don't really get that feeling of invincibility with this team that we had with last year's squad (up until the playoffs of course).

A few weeks back, the day Manny got suspended, Brant Brown commented, "I can't think of a single player on the Cubs roster that would be catastrophic to lose for 50 games." I submitted that losing Aramis would be pretty close to catastrophic to which Dave Thomas responded, "Yeah, I'd have to go with Aramis too. But given that he's related to Manny, anything could happen."

A few days later, catastrophe officially struck and Aramis was lost for 2 months with a busted shoulder. Dave Thomas is currently under investigation for both assault with deadly foreshadowing and the disappearance of Brant Brown's name from the sidebar.

On the bright side, at least we didn't lose 20-1 today and have our slutty advances spurned by Jake Peavy. Jake Peavy is an honest man. You won't get him into bed that fast Kenny Williams!

*When the Sox were losing 20-0, had they hit a home run, would Hawk Harrelson still be obligated to yell, "You can put it on the board.....YEEEEEESSSS!" Wouldn't that have been both comically absurd and wildly inappropriate? Alas, the Sox suck worse than the Cubs, so that didn't happen and we'll never know.