Yes, the season has just reached the 10 percent mark, and some games that have been washed out will need to be made up. And yes, Chicago Cubs staff ace Matt Garza is due to come back to the team soon, and that will help. And Edwin Jackson will probably win a game, eventually. But a 5-11 start has the Cubs in line for the worst season in franchise history.
Over the course of a long season, things tend to even out. Players who are hitting .400 at this point in the season won’t be when September rolls around. The six-month grind of a major-league season will bring everything to the expected levels. And just because the Chicago Cubs are at a .313 winning percentage heading into Sunday’s game with Milwaukee, it doesn’t mean that it will hold the rest of the way.
But consider this: Last year, after the Chicago Cubs traded away whatever they could at the trading deadline, they won just 30 percent of their final 60 games, and that was enough to push them into triple digits in the loss column. If they take a similar path this year, and trade away Alfonso Soriano and any other pieces they have left, the bottom could fall out again. In which case, the club record of 103 losses will surely fall by the wayside.
My crystal ball on matters like this is as good as anybody else’s, which is to say that it hardly works at all. The bullpen can’t possibly continue to be as bad as it has, and the team’s error-ridden ways on the field are hopefully going to pass. But if they don’t, this could be a very long season, indeed.
