Your 2010 Cubs (not mine)

By: T.R. Slyder, TRSlyder@yahoo.com, AndyDisco on Twitter

Question: Can you name the 0 teams who have more expensive ticket prices than the Cubs?

That is correct. The Cubs have the most expensive ticket prices in all of baseball. So what is General Manger Jim Hendry doing with all of that money? Let us take a look at the Cubs 2010 Roster.

The bottom line is that the Cubs roster is not a well-constructed one. When a teams' defense up the middle is catcher Koyie Hill, Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot at SS and 2B respectively, and Marlon Byrd in CF, someone screwed up. Do I blame Hill, Theriot, Fontenot and Byrd for not being awesome, or do I blame the GM who assembled this there-I-fixed-it team? I blame the GM.

After a cursory glance at the roster a few things jump out- the Cubs hallmark of a nauseous bullpen is still very much alive, a dearth of young talent, and a dearth of old talent, and somehow the names "Zambrano" and "Soriano" made their way onto the opening day lineup card.

We'll start with the paucity of young talent. The following are all of the Cubs players born after 1981:


Pitchers: Justin Berg, Esmailin Caridad, Tom Gorzelanny, Carlos Marmol, Sean Marshall, James Russell, Randy Wells.
Thrower: Jeff Samardzija
Catcher: Geovanny Soto
Infielders: none
Outfielders: Tyler Colvin


That is the exhaustive list of Cubs aged 28 or younger on the current Active Roster. Of that list, Randy Wells was the only player to have a respectable 2009 MLB season. *sigh* ok, because I am nice I will add Gorzelanny to that list too. Marmol's season was laughably terrible, same goes for Marshall. I could not in good conscience designate Jeff Samardzija as a "pitcher" on the list above, he is a thrower and will never be anything but. That being said, he totally sucked last year and has a 2010 ERA of 108.00. Moving on to infielders we find Geovanny Soto, who had such a horrendous sophomore slump that most people just assume he was taking performance enhancing drugs as a rookie (he was rookie of the year and legitimately outstanding) and obviously stopped before his second year. Did I mention he tested positive for marijuana before his sophomore season? He did.

So that is the Cubs "young talent".

As for their nauseous bullpen, I don't know what to tell you. Here is the exhaustive list of what can safely be called "reliable arms" in the bullpen. The list is as follows:_______. That was the list. Again, there is only so much bashing of the players I can do for not being great- the GM should have known that he was working with insufficient personnel and assembled a better pen. For Jim Hendry to think this bullpen is non-god-awful is a fire-able offense. It just is. When I think about the job he did in assembling the bullpen, all I can think of is the website I linked to above. It's like he just said, "Perfect. I have signed more than enough pitchers to field a roster of 12. I guess I am done with that now. Man, all that signing of no-talent pitchers sure makes me hungry for trans fatty acids."

As for the aforementioned "old talent", the Cubs have Carlos Zambrano, Alphonso Soriano, Derek Lee and Aramis Ramirez. I will lay off Lee and Ramirez, but Zambrano and Soriano might be the two most overpaid players in the NL Central. They were/are wildly talented and at times electrifying, but those times grow further and further apart, and when they are not electrifying us, they are playing miserably. Oh, and Soriano is just incapable of hitting good pitching. He unloads on mistake pitches (especially in his first at bat before a pitcher gets settled in, or against 4 and 5 starters). Guess how many crappy pitchers Soriano faces in the playoffs? 0. Guess how Soriano has done in the playoffs in a Cubs uniform? Anus-y.

Those two lazy headcases remind me of the axiom, "An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.". Sure their contracts are bad, and that was an error to sign them to those sums, but Piniella continuing to start Soriano and naming Z as the opening day starter, makes this error a mistake. With them getting playing time, Cubs fans are getting it from both ends.

So half of our most talented players, somehow manage to hurt the team. The other half are solid, but not great, perennial barely-missed-the-All Star-Game guys, but are getting older and have had difficulty staying healthy. The bottom line is that they need some support from the guys around them. Additionally, they are solid players but Superstars they are not. No one would ever say that the sky is the limit with them, or there is no telling how great of a year they could have if they stay healthy.

It isn't Lee or Ramirez's fault that they are no longer young or have the upside of Justin Upton, Ben Zobrist or Carl Crawford, but the Cubs have 0 exciting players. Across town, the White Sox have Alexei Ramirez, Gordon Beckham and Carlos Quentin which are all young, outstanding, exciting and no-ceiling talents. Even the lowly divisional foe, the Cincinnati Reds, who I am watching the Cubs play now, have Jay Bruce, Joey Votto and the always solid Brandon Phillips. Those guys are fun to watch and all have All Star potential. The only young Cub that could possibly elicit excitement from anyone is Tyler Colvin, and he has 26 career at bats.

So here is what the Cubs do NOT have: young talent, old talent, relief pitching, All Star shoe-ins, rational ticket prices, and a respectable GM, a chance of making the playoffs with anything resembling their current roster.

I'm already starting to get un-excited for 2011.







That's how I roll.