Thumbs Down - Can the Bears Overcome Jay Cutler's Injury?

"I've learned that life is one crushing defeat after another, until you just wish Flanders was dead." - Homer Simpson

I certainly don't feel that way about life in general (and not just because, like hens love roosters and geese love ganders, I love Ned Flanders more than Homer Simpson loves a nacho hat).  But the first part of that sentence does a pretty good job of summarizing how I've felt watching my football teams this fall.  After a 6-0 start, the Illini may need to win their last game of the regular season at Minnesota to avoid being shut out of a bowl game.  The Bears had been doing a good job of covering up the stench emanating from Champaign by posting a five-game winning streak - and major props to you if you guessed that the Bears, who were sitting at 2-3 at the same time the Illini were 6-0, would reach seven wins before the Illini did.  However, as you've undoubtedly heard, the Bears suffered a crushing injury on Sunday, losing long snapper Patrick Mannelly to a torn ACL.  Oh - and there was also something about Jay Cutler breaking his thumb during the win over the Chargers.

Cubs to Start Doug Davis Saturday? That Makes Me Happy, which Makes Me Sad.

Good news - the Cubs are putting an end to the James Russell experiment and are going to use an actual major league starting pitcher on Saturday against the Giants!

Bad news - that actual major league starting pitcher will be 35-year-old Doug Davis, who will be making his first big league start since off-season elbow surgery. Davis has a career WHIP of 1.50, which ranks 64th among the 65 active pitchers with at least 1000 IP (side note - our opening day starter is also very close to the bottom of that list). Davis does have a career ERA of 2.98 and career WHIP of 1.19 at Wrigley Field, and was the winning pitcher for Arizona in Game Two of the 2007 NLDS (a/k/a the "Ted Lilly spikes his glove" game), so you could file this one under "if you can't beat 'em, sign 'em" - that's how they got Derrek Lee, after all. On the other hand, if the Cubs signed every "Cub killer" in the major leagues they'd probably have about 400 players in their organization.

It's sad to know that a team with the second-highest payroll in the National League and a (supposedly) vastly improved farm system doesn't have any better options than bringing Doug Davis in as the 5th starter. It also doesn't answer the question of what the Cubs are going to do about their 4th starter Casey Coleman (he of the 1.95 WHIP and 18/20 K/BB Ratio) until Randy Wells and/or Andrew Cashner return from the DL (although it looks like Wells is finally going to start a rehab assignment). On the plus side, despite Russell and Coleman combining to go 1-7 with a 8.16 ERA in their 10 starts, the Cubs are ahead of Milwaukee in the standings, so I guess things could be worse (see - I can be positive!)

Cubs Lean on Russell for Emergency Start - Again, and Again, and Again....

Tough break for the Cubs, losing starting pitchers Randy Wells and Andrew Cashner to injuries so early in the season, so they'll have to rely on LOOGY James Russell to make an emergency start tonight against...wait a minute, didn't I write about this before? [Checks old blog posts] Yes, I did - two weeks ago; Russell is actually going to be making his third "emergency" start tonight, after allowing 8 earned runs over 5 2/3 innings in his other two "emergency" starts. You mean to tell me, Jim Hendry and Mike Quade, that you've had all this time to fix this hole in the rotation, and in the entire Cubs organization (to say nothing of the entire world of organized baseball) you can't come up with even one pitcher who can give your team a decent chance at a win?

If Hendry or Quade got a flat tire on their car, they would put on the spare tire and then continue driving hundreds of miles on it as if nothing had happened.

The 2011 Chicago Cubs - Now With Even More Injuries!

The Cubs began the 2011 season with a full complement of healthy starters, unlike the Cardinals (sans Adam Wainwright), the Brewers (sans Zack Greinke) and the Reds (sans Johnny Cueto). Well, that advantage over our division rivals lasted all of about a week, with Randy Wells and Andrew Cashner each going on the 15-day disabled list after making only one start. I hear you saying, "fifteen days, that's not so bad. We're still in good shape, right?"

Wrong! Now comes word that Wells will be out 3 1/2 to 4 weeks, and Cashner will be out up to 6 weeks. And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse than throwing away a game against the Astros by having LOOGY James Russell make an emergency start, you see that the Cubs are looking at veteran washouts Doug Davis (career WHIP 1.50) and Ramon Ortiz (career ERA 4.93) as rotation filler to potentially throw away lots of games until Wells and Cashner return. It's almost enough to make you wish Carlos Silva were still around. But he's no longer on the market, having signed a minor league deal with the Yankees, where he's probably laughing his big fat...contract off at the Cubs right now.

New Faces

The 2010 Cubs are leading the major leagues in one-run losses by a wide margin. So the best thing that could happen to this team is to have its OPS leader go on the DL - especially when the only other catching option on the major league roster has a sub .500 OPS. To remedy this, the Cubs called up Welington Castillo, who was so excited to replace Geovany Soto that he left one of his "L's" in Iowa. Castillo has an .823 OPS (albeit in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League), but he's only 23, so maybe he'll be somewhat useful. Unless the manager does what he did last year when Soto went on the DL and plays Koyie Hill almost every inning of every game until Soto returns, that is.

Also, Derrek Lee, who is still dead last among NL first baseman in OPS, will be out on bereavement leave. Micah Hoffpauir has been brought up to replace him. Last year, the Hoff hit .239/.300/.427, which is actually better than Lee's .246/.332/.383 line this year. That's right - Lee has been less productive than a guy who couldn't even find a spot on the Cubs' major-league roster this year. We'll see if the manager insists on putting the Hoff in the 3 or 4 spot in the order, as he has done with Lee in every single game he has started this year.