The Cubs Are Temporarily Broken

Well I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to write this blog, thought after the sweep at Citi they would rebound at home against the Reds and Braves and right the ship, but that just didn’t happen, the Cubs are broken (hopefully temporarily). There are two ways to think about it. 1) That this is just a simple slump all teams go through. They’re on week 3 without a day off. The pitching staff is tired, the bullpen is worn out and bad, and they’ve had a bunch of nagging little injuries that have coincided with a team wide slump. This shit happens. No one actually thought the Cubs were going to win 120 games. Baseball seasons are long and arduous. Every good team goes through these stretches. Texas just went 2-7 in their last 9. The Indians have gone through slumps and so have the Nationals. It sucks that it happened right before the All Star break but that’s how it goes. If the Cubs come back from the break and continue to play like this for another 2 weeks then I’ll start to panic. But as of right now let’s get some perspective. They have an 8 game lead at the break and the second best record in all of baseball. A slump sucks but the cushion they gave themselves makes it less than dire.

Now the pessimistic brain. What if the Cubs pitching stays bad. What if the bullpen doesn’t get help or not enough help. What if the hitting stays in a rut and the team never clicks all at the same time (I’d love to see the bats bail out the bullpen just once). Those thoughts have all gone through my head, we’re Cubs fans after all. But I’m here to tell you it will be ok. The Cubs weren’t the .700 team they played like in the first 2 months. And they also aren’t the .500 team they’re playing like now. Everything will be ok, that’s not to say there aren’t some issues that need to be addressed, but if you’re a Cubs fan freaking out and jumping off this ship in July then you’re crazy. Yes they’ve sucked for about a month now and against some shitty teams, but I just don’t see it lasting long term. Get some rest, get a few guys back (Dexter), get some bullpen help, maybe go to a 6 man rotation for a month, have some Gordon Bombay style fun. Do those things and all this turns around.

PS

I’m in love with Willson Contreras. Play him every day, please.