Cubs Might as Well Be Chopped Liver

Last night, I confess that I switched off the game when it was apparent that the bats hadn’t been shipped yet. My partner and I watched these Ukrainian women cooking up a big platter of what I can only describe as liver lasagna, which looked gross at first but acquired a patina that made it look respectable in the end. A more perfect metaphor for the Cubs’ 2026 season so far hasn’t yet been invented. I like chopped liver, but I don’t think I could go for the liver lasagna. It’s a nyet, a nemaye, from me, dawg.

I’m not in love with the current group of Cubs. I mean, I grant you that I own both a baby blue PCA jersey and a gray Nico Hoerner jersey, but…

We knew about the lack of adequate starters from the get-go, and this is 100% on Jed Hoyer. Matthew Boyd going down, given his injury history, was an inevitability. Jameson Taillon was going to act his age at some point. Shota Imanaga has his kitchen making meatballs by the gross.

When, by my reckoning, Colin Rea and Ian Happ best represent the personality and accomplishments of the team, that team is in trouble. Happ gets consistent results in the end, but the process makes many people crazy, and Rea’s success is mystifying.

It’s beginning to look as though Dansby Swanson is replacing Happ as the target of ire because he continues to flail helplessly at sliders down and out and fastballs up. In key moments when they could watch the balls go by, walk, and let others attend to the RISPy business of bringing them in, they flail. It’s fugly.

“They were so tight,” said the immortal Jim Bouton of another squad in his seminal book Ball Four, “that you couldn’t pull a needle out of their assholes with a tractor.”

That’s our Cubs right now, in need possibly of some Maddonesque action. But they have the sure and steady hand of Craig Counsell at the helm. Winning would break things up, but winning won’t happen until some outside force removes the immovable object, namely the Sisyphean rock the team is rolling right now. One wouldn’t need an Atlas to point out the weight of the world on the shoulders of a squad that was expected to reach the postseason and perhaps add a piece of metal to their trophy room.

The Cubs brass are leaning so hard on that ledger that they’ve gotten Anthony Rizzo and David Ross to do a vidcast — the June 10 episode is about what Jason Heyward said in his famous speech. I am told Colin Cowherd got that going. Can’t stand him, but I don’t really want to look too close at their politics right now — rich jocks tend to drift to starboard, is all I’ll say.

The stuff is interesting enough, but it makes expectations ridiculously high for a group that has always been a little questionable and now seems to be caught by that famous catch. Number twenty-two, that is, and it’s some catch.

Still, there’s a lot of season left. It could get worse. Especially if the liver is left out in the rain.

Thanks for reading.