Posts tagged ‘winning’

After their awesome start to the season and record-setting April, the Cubs are now mired in an awkward slump. Awkward because the offense that is generating the most runs per game in the National League isn’t supposed to lose 8 out of 11 games. But we’ve found a way. But as inexplicable as the losses have been, the wins are just as difficult to account for. Ronny Cedeno taking walks? What kind of twilight zone episode is this?

Maybe we should just admit that this is the team we expected to see when the season started on March 31st: A team that loses too many close games and occasionally beats the heck out of the competition. That was the 2007 Cubs. Or more correctly that was the 2007 Central Division Champion Chicago Cubs. Our formula last season was to tread water until the pitching staffs for the rest of the division broke down, and then we rode the bouncing coattails of Alfonso Soriano in September. It worked then, and it will work again this year.

In a way it’s just sad that we’ve already seen what this 2008 Cubs team is capable of so early in the season. It makes seeing it every third or fourth game its own form of slow burning pain. But take solace, Cubs fans, because as much as the Cubs haven’t perfected their potion, neither have the White Sox. Their struggles are so bad that they put all their bats next to a bunch of blow-up dolls in the clubhouse as a joke. That just proves that nobody in this city has perfected anything except silliness, and we can expect plenty of that from both sides of town throughout the summer.

Considering the dolls and the Cubs tough losses at St. Louis and Cincinnati just goes to show that a fluke in baseball is still the norm. A broken-bat flare off of Ryan Dempster scored 2 runs on Monday night, the runs that ended up making the difference in the game. A few blown calls on sliding plays at home plate effected the outcomes both Sunday and Monday.

How should the Cubs answer? Two things: get out an airpump, and start Ronny Cedeno. You never know, it might work.