So why do a Cubs mid-season review now, when the 2011 season isn't half-over yet? Well, we're 1/3 of the way through the season, the team hasn't played even up to my lowered pre-season expectations, and with all of the injuries and bad baseball I'm not sure if I'll still be paying attention to this team when they do reach the halfway point. Through 54 games, the Cubs are sporting a 23-31 record, good for the fourth-worst record in all of baseball, and they just finished a 3-6 homestand against three sub-.500 teams (Mets, Pirates, and Astros) with a flourish, getting swept by Houston, the team with the worst record in the NL. The Cubs have come by their record honestly, too - with a run differential of minus-45 (only two teams in baseball are worse right now), their expected won-loss record is 22-32. So if anything, they're lucky they aren't even worse.
It hasn't been all terrible, and there have even been a few bright spots - the emergence of Starlin Castro and Darwin Barney as a seemingly legitimate major league double play combo; Matt Garza outperforming expectations (mine, anyway); and the hot hitting of Reed Johnson and Jeff Baker - but even those silver linings are tarnished. Three of the bright spots (Garza, Johnson and Baker) are currently on the DL, and let's face it - it's not a good sign when your "bright spots" include two right-handed-hitting platoon players (you know, the guys who don't get as much playing time as their left-handed-hitting counterparts). Even the excitement produced by our young middle infielders is tempered by their Corey Patterson-esque walk rates - despite batting averages over .300, neither player has an OBP over .340.
As for the bad, the "nice" thing about the Cubs' slow start is that it's been pretty much a total team effort:
Offense - the Cubs are in the middle of the pack in runs scored (8th in the NL), but they have severely underperformed in many areas. Despite being second in the NL in batting average (.272) and fourth in the NL in OBP (.328), the team is hitting only .233 with runners in scoring position (tied for 12th in the NL). Most of the guys who were supposed to be our middle of the order run producers (Byrd, Ramirez, Soto, Pena) have struggled to get runners home. Despite the high team OBP (i.e. the fact that there are lots of baserunners to drive home, relatively speaking), among those four only Pena has more than 20 RBI so far this year. The team is 13th in the NL in HR, with only two players having more than 3 HR so far this year - and one of those guys (Soriano) is on the DL right now. And Soriano's team leading 12 HR have only produced 29 RBI, so it's not like he's been raking in clutch situations, either. Oh, and in terms of baserunning, the Cubs are at or near the bottom of the NL whether you use old-fashioned metrics (15 SB; only Atlanta has fewer) or new-fangled ones (last in the NL in FanGraphs new UBR metric). So the offense has been scoring some runs but could be doing more with the opportunities they've had. Which is unfortunate because...
Pitching - the Cubs are last in the NL with a 4.77 team ERA, and the warm weather (which helps boost offense at Wrigley Field) hasn't really arrived in Chicago yet. Only Minnesota (4.81) has a worse team ERA in the major leagues, and they play in the league with the DH. Injuries to the Cubs' most effective starter (Garza) and two youngest starters (Wells and Cashner) have left fans subjected to 18 starts (one-third of the team's games) from Casey Coleman (8 starts, 7.25 ERA, 2.05 WHIP, 25/26 K/BB ratio), washouts Doug Davis and Rodrigo "RoLo" Lopez (combined - 5 starts, 7.02 ERA and 1.80 WHIP), and the failed James Russell experiment. Those four pitchers have combined for a 2-13 record as starters, which is the big reason the Cubs are where they are in the standings. It's hard to blame these guys individually for their poor performance - this one's actually on management for not having any sort of major-league ready alternatives as insurance against the inevitable injuries that happen to starting pitchers. Actually, one of the few sources of fun for the rest of the season might be trying to guess which washed-up starter the Cubs will trot out next. Will it be Josh Fogg? Kip Wells? Orlando Hernandez? The possibilities are almost limitless!
Defense - again, whether you go old-school (44 errors) or new-school (-12.1 UZR) the Cubs have the 3rd worst team defense in the National League. It's convenient when the eye test and the numbers both come to the same conclusion: the Cubs are an awful defensive team.
Manager - Mike Quade wasn't giving a great roster to start the season, but going beyond the usual second-guess situations managers encounter, many of his decisions have been major face-palm inducers. For example, moves like giving five starts to a pitcher (Russell) best used as a LOOGY and installing Blake DeWitt, a weak-hitting 2B with no experience playing the OF, as his every-day LF after Soriano's injury don't exactly inspire my confidence in Quade's ability to make the right decisions when (if?) he ever gets to manage a team with actual talent.
So basically, the 2011 Chicago Cubs are a bad team, and what's worse is that they aren't even a "fun" bad team. I can't believe I'm about to write this, but I wish the Cubs were more like the Kansas City Royals right now. Yes, the Royals' record (25-31) is basically the same as the Cubs' record right now, but they have several good young players at the major league level already and a great farm system in place that could produce a contending team very soon in the relatively weak AL Central. In other words, Royals' fans have hope based on players already in their organization. Contrast that with the Cubs' fans, for whom "hope" amounts to watching the team let its big contracts expire at the end of this season and hoping that the team signs some high impact free agents (Pujols? Fielder? CJ Wilson? Roy Oswalt?) to make the team quick contenders. And before you talk about the team filling holes with prospects from the great farm system the Cubs are developing, keep in mind that none of the Cubs' current top 20 minor league prospects received an "A" grade (i.e. "elite....have a good chance of becoming stars or superstars. Almost all Grade A prospects develop into major league regulars") from John Sickels's Baseball America rankings. So really, there are probably too many holes to fill on next year's roster for the team to become an instant contender in 2012.
Bottom line - I've been pinning my hopes on the 2012 season, but the more I think about it, the more it looks like even next year we'll still be saying "wait till next year".
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