Lee pulled from the game with soreness of some kind

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Yes, and counting on everything to go as planned is one of the big reasons the Cubs haven't won a WS in 100 years. The Cubs are going to need Lee to produce if they plan on winning b/c Bradley, Soriano, and Soto are no locks to stay healthy and/or produce at high enough levels to do without Lee. Having Huffpauir certainly makes me feel better about the situation, though.

 

They won without him producing last year. I just don't see how they need him to produce this year if they are going to win as a team. Obviously one would hope he improves a little bit from last year's production. I don't want him to miss the season. But if last year's team thrived despite Lee "not showing up" for 5 months, I think this years team could likely survive if Hoffpauir has to replace him for a month or two.

 

Even if they have a little bit of a drop because of less production at 2B mostly (the OF shouldn't be too much worse. Bradley will make up for Edmonds, Reed will likely regress a little bit, Soriano will likely play more games unless he has another fluke injury, and Fukudome will likely at least repeat his production if not improve) they still have some wiggle room. Last year's team scored 855 runs in 161 games. They could have quite a dropoff and only score 800 runs and still be one of the top offenses in the league. In fact, that would have been the top last year (but not in a normal year).

 

So sure, the Cubs without Lee improving will likely not score as many runs as last year. That doesn't preclude them from winning though as they can have a less potent offense and still win a ton of games. How far do you really see them dropping CubinNY? 775 runs? 750 runs? I don't see how the Cubs have enough downgrades to be down anywhere close to 100 runs difference.