Baffoe: The Cubs Are Bad, Vol. I

By Tim Baffoe--

(CBS) I have decided to chronicle all the very valid, very serious reasons why the hullabaloo about the 2016 Chicago Cubs is an exercise in tragicomedy. This isn't a good team, and you're all fooling yourself. Repent and embrace the pain.

As this is Chicago, I am bound by blood and leaden water to subscribe to the Bill Swerski-Lovie Smith scholarly theory of applying equal if not greater emotional weight to regular season rivalries as I am to pursuits of championships.

My dad was right before he was so rudely cut off by that 670 The Score producer. This is the St. Louis Cardinals whom at press time the Cubs had just lost to in consecutive games. And the Cubs will probably get swept Wednesday afternoon seeing as starter Jake Arrieta will be too focused on how great his perfect naked dreamy bearded body is going to look in the next "Body Issue" that I pre-ordered. (Or the game gets rained out, which I count as a two-game sweep then.)  

The Cardinals are the baseball Green Bay Packers. It's not just because they've had sustained success based primarily on building well from within, then coupled that with smart transactions. It's also because they will always be the terrible step-parent the Chicago team bows to until it gets the courage to say to their faces "You're not my dad."

Beating the Cardinals and the Packers is the ultimate. It's at the top of the list on the preseason high school motivational itinerary posted in the locker room. And if the Cubs are good as so many across the country have gargled through the Kool-Aid chugging, they wouldn't have just lost the World Series of June.

But this wasn't so hard to see coming. The Cardinals are savvy vets, real pros. They showed up to Wrigley Field playing possum, pretending to be a less-than-stellar squad with a less than 2 percent chance of winning the NL Central.

"Don't sleep on this team," Cardinals infielder Matt Carpenter said in planting the seed a week ago. "The way the starting pitching is coming around, we're going to be dangerous. We're dangerous right now.

"I think some of the fan base has kind of forgotten about us. We're pretty good."

That was clearly a shot at #WeAreGood, the hashtag made fashionable by Cubs catcher Miguel Montero, which is so clearly now a falsity.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we make a pretty good run and catch those guys," Carpenter continued -- those guys being those bum Cubs. "They haven't gone through a bad streak, which every team will go through. And we haven't gone through our good streak yet."

Hmmm. It just so happens Carpenter's team then steps up and takes the first two of this crucial series. Funny how that Cardinal Devil Magic works. And really good teams don't get beat by magic or spells. They don't shrink when their big brother throws at LeBron Bryant's head after missing his backside. The no-longer-Cleveland-Cavaliers of baseball do, though, I guess.

The Cubs also have lost their catalyst midseason. Dexter Fowler is hurt, and hamstrings are forever, so chalk him up as useless the rest of the way. Ditto for Jorge Soler, who just so happened to have his greatest series against the Cardinals in the playoffs last October before turning impotent -- think about it.

Albert Almora Jr. was clearly not briefed prior to Monday on trying to take third base on a ball that gets past definite Hall of Famer Yadier Molina. He and only he lost that game for the Cubs, and what some want to attribute to grit and aggressiveness, I'm here to tell you is a youngster too hopped up on celebrity and candy and Jolt Cola. It's obvious with the new wave of youngsters up with the big club. Watch Almora's recent former Iowan Willson Contreras, a twitchy sugar-high psycho behind the plate. These young actors in a Mountain Dew Kickstart commercial will undue manager Joe Maddon's delicate balance he's so lauded for.

As he said that, Contreras glanced at a mace, bone saw and "List of people who talk bad about my team" hanging in his locker.

But the on-field flaws aren't just products of rookies. The Chris Coghlan trade is already a failure, as evident from him not taking second base when Almora was nailed at third in the ninth inning of Monday's loss. Coghlan's idiocy has the excuse of being Irish, but still. Jason Heyward has clearly been correctly analyzed by Cardinals fans.

It's also inevitable that Kris Bryant regresses to the point that Major League Baseball retroactively gives the 2015 NL Rookie of the Year to Randal Grichuk.

A good team defies Cardinal Devil Magic, which is far from tapped out.

"We've played some of the toughest part of our schedule and (those guys) haven't," Carpenter told the Post-Dispatch. "My guess? I bet we can get it down to four games before the All-Star break. And if you're four games back at the All-Star break, that's right where you want to be.

"If we get it to four, they'll be thinking about it. That's all you can ask for."

Damn right they will be thinking about it. They already are.

Loser talk. What a loser. This division belongs to the Cardinals because, as I've said for a while...

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Tim Baffoe is a columnist for CBSChicago.com. Follow Tim on Twitter @TimBaffoe. The views expressed on this page are those of the author, not CBS Local Chicago or our affiliated television and radio stations.