I haven't written to this blog lately because, quite honestly, there is nothing to say. The winter meetings are about to pass into the books and the Cubs have, predictably, done nothing at all, or next to nothing.
As I have noted before, I have nothing against building from the bottom up. I just think you can do so and still field a team that is marginally competitive and entertaining. I also think that to the extent you do not at least try to become mediocre, you penalize the handful of genuinely talented players you may have by forcing them to play like losers in games that everybody knows do not matter.
So far then, the Cubs acquired several placeholders of note. They traded Bogusevic to the Marlins for Ruggiano, a right-handed slugger who presumably will platoon with Nate Schierholtz in RF. OK, so you are counting on Schierholtz to come back and hit .250, drive in 70 runs and Ruggiano to add some right-handed pop.
This gives you the illusion of having a complete right-fielder who hits 30 homers and drives in 100 runs. Ruggiano is Hairston revisited. Looks good on paper, but on the field it is about as meaningless as the great third base tandem that produced similar stats last year but no wins to speak of.
All these guys are journeyman players who do not get on base or hit for average and who strike out a lot. For the past few years, the Cubs have had the worst outfield in baseball in terms of speed, hitting, and defensive skills. This year, they go into the season with a likely starting alignment of Lake, Sweeney, and the aforementioned platoon. Lake is the only player of this group with any genuine potential and he has a skill set more or less akin to that of Starlin Castro when he first came up.
In addition to the Ruggiano pickup, the Cubs added a left-handed hitting catcher, George Kottaras, who can neither hit nor catch and a left-handed pitcher, Wesley Wright, who will definitely help out James Russell in the bullpen, but, whoopty-do, is that all there is?
