6/14 - Possibly Moving up the Transplant List Cubs (Montgomery) @ Mets (Harvey) 6:10 CST CSN/670

[Bryants Disco Ball]

I still feel pretty much exactly as I did last week or whenever, when I said we'd win the division by 10 games. I still think we'll win it without much worry late in the year. Maybe drop a couple games off of that with the newfound worry about what we'll get from Hendricks and if/when he'll be back. We now have Eddie Butler and John Lackey both in the rotation, probably for awhile. That is bad news. But we'll trade for pitching. I'm not sure for what quality. But, at least enough to shoot Butler and/or Lackey into the sun.

 

And I remain convinced that the rest of the division is even more trashy than we are. There won't be another team in the division over .500. We could seriously win, like, 85 games and not sweat it out in the last week. And, with an addition here or there, a few guys picking it up even just a little, and Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo on the roster, that's not going to be that hard to do.

 

Duker, I want you to be right so much. But I respectfully have to say you are crazy on this one.

 

I'm disappointed and in disbelief that the 2017 Cubs are this mediocre, especially since the division was just telling them to win it. Was giving it to them. But when so many things are below average, it's hard to see everything suddenly clicking. At least in 2015, we had quality starting pitching but just couldn't score. We needed one thing to improve to take off. We need like three major things to improve this time.

 

There is no opportunity to create any real momentum because there is no way this staff is going to get into a groove long enough. And our offense isn't good enough this season to compensate for that. An easy part of the schedule, that doesn't exist for us this season.

 

This is the Jason Heyward situation from last year, where everybody wanted to believe -- it's early, look at his track record, he's too good -- until finally we all just had to concede it wasn't going to happen.

 

The Cubs need their own reset. I still think there is a very real chance that ending such an historic drought and the intensity of those playoffs just took something out of them. (I realize now I've gotten into the crazy part of this post, but I do believe it).

 

Hopefully, these kinds of posts are hilarious to look back on in a few months. I just hope we are talking about mine and not yours.

 

The comparison to Heyward last year isn't great because last year, you were relying on one guy to improve and there was a higher threshold to achieve this goal. This year, you can rely on any host of guys improving from their underachieving starts (some of whom are starting to turn it around) or acquiring another SP just to get the traction needed to win this garbage division.

 

Yeah, that makes sense.

 

I was just comparing that feeling of he's going to turn it around. He's going to be OK. It's all good, until we realized it wasn't going to happen. There are a ton of reasons to hold out hope for this team as a whole because it seems so bizarre that this could actually be our team this season, but I just think that same feeling will eventually hit.