2012 MLB Season Preview: Chicago Cubs

2012 Chicago Cubs Season Outlook

Outlook is the wrong word for this bunch. More like look out. It is quite possible that the Cubs will be the worst team in baseball. Trying to piece together a starting lineup from the 40-man roster looks like a hopeless task. The Cubs have no power. They have mismatched players to fill the infield. They have perhaps one standout starting pitcher in Matt Garza and some doubt he will still be with the team after July. Carlos Marmol is an iffy closer who blew 10 save opportunities last year.

As potentially great as Starlin Castro is at short, he also made 29 errors last season and must work on that portion of his game.

The team’s biggest offseason acquisition was Theo Epstein. Wooed away from the Boston Red Sox, where he earned everlasting fame as the man who put together World Series championship teams in 2004 and 2007 after the Red Sox had not won a title since 1918, Epstein now undertakes the biggest challenge in baseball–making the Cubs into a World Series winner. Epstein brought in one of his former Red Sox parners in Jed Hoyer as GM to help.

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day and certainly the Cubs will not be built in a season. Epstein has a big-market franchise and needs to start over completely with rebuilding the roster. The Cubs do not have enough of anything. They could be historically bad this season. The only reason Alfonso Soriano is still around collecting his millions is because the Cubs haven’t been able to get rid of him. They might have liked to keep Aramis Ramirez, but he exercised his freedom of choice in free agency and moved on.

Kerry Wood is back for one last year, probably, in the bullpen before he retires.

This is going to be one of those seasons in Chicago where the most fun fans will have is working on their tans in the bleachers. There is no reasonable expectation for the team to succeed at all.  This is a year where Epstein will be saving payroll money because few guys are worth locking up for the long-term.

The Cubs can hope it rains a lot, but eventually they’ve got to play re-scheduled games. Chicago is more likely to play the Bad News Bears in the post-season than any other National League team. This could be a team so bad that Ernie Banks wouldn’t even want to play two.

This is a starting lineup and rotation that is etched in sand, not stone, so there will probably be a huge amount of transactions during the season. I wonder if the over/under on the number of players passing through the Cubs roster (even if the club stays fairly healthy) should be set at 50. Does that sound too pessimistic? Heck, you can’t be too pessimistic with this group.