Panic in the air

There’s only one thing for the people who say that it’s too early in the baseball season to panic to do: check the Chicago Cubs injury report. As of today, the report lists Carlos Zambrano on the DL with a strained hamstring, and nagging injuries to Derrek Lee (neck spasms), Milton Bradley (groin) and Geovany Soto (shoulder). It also will now be adding star third basemen Aramis Ramirez, who dislocated his left shoulder in Friday night’s game at Milwaukee and will be out four-to-six weeks.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Cubs bullpen has been uglier than the patch in Rasheed Wallace’s head. The relief corps have an ERA of 5.02, have walked 55 batters in 84 innings and have almost half the team’s losses - six. Letting Kerry Wood leave for Cleveland in free agency has tuned out to be a bad move, which at least cough one person cough said at the time it happened. And - translate this sentence however you’d like - we still have 130 or so games to go.

So what should those who bleed Cubby blue do, jump ship or hang tight? The truth is, the baseball season is a long and winding road, and injuries are going to happen. It really is difficult that all the injuries are happening at the same time, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it devastating. The Cubs still have some talent that shockingly isn’t hurt, such as Ted Lilly and Alfonso Soriano. And they have an easier than average schedule coming up, with the six games versus the Padres, as well as games against the Pirates and Manny-less Dodgers before May is over.

But I’m not off the ledge yet. The 2007 Cubs were a nice story but didn’t have enough to compete in October. The 2008 Cubs were clearly the best team in the National League before they decided to go Rip Van Winkle in the NLDS. The 2009 Cubs were maybe the last chance to make a run at a title before the aging talent passed its prime. Call it premature panicking, but the reason I follow the team so closely is because I want to see them win. All these injuries and all the garbage being thrown by the bullpen has me worried that that may not occur this year. And as any Cubs fan knows, it’s never too early to start worrying.

UPDATE: To prove I'm not the only one in panic-mode, here is a text message exchange from Sat. night during the Cubs beatdown by the Brewers between myself and the biggest Cubs fan I know, my good friend Brian. (Brian goes to school in Wisconsin, so he was probably surrounded by Brewers fans when this took place.)

B: Can Chad Fox just retire already?
E: Or die.
B: I swear he only faced 2 batters last year and the same thing happened. Heilman also needs to die.
E: This entire bullpen is shit.
B: Entire team.


Yes folks, we're aware its the second week of May. That's just how Cubs fans are.