Cubs: Patience has an expiration date even if losing does not

Last week I wrote as the Chicago Cubs struggled to a 4-3 start that fans needed to take a chill pill.  But like every other medication, chill pills have a date they expire.

The question for fans as we head toward two weeks into the season at 5-7 is when is that expiration date?  Let’s put some perspective on this before we answer that question.

Remember those 6-1 Cincinnati Reds? They’ve gone 2-4 since last Saturday and are now 8-5. The Brewers were 3-4 until they ran into St. Louis and the Cubs and have gone 4-2 since that subpar start.  Such are the vagaries of early-season baseball.

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I’m not going into the struggles of the Cubs bats these first 12 games

They haven’t been hitting or scoring runs, so they aren’t winning games.

Entering Saturday’s outbreak, the Cubs’ 34 runs scored ranked the second-worst in all of MLB.  The worst is the first-place New York Mets at 29 runs scored.  In first you ask?  Sure, when you give up just 26 runs.  But the Cubs -23 run differential by far the worst in MLB.

Will the pitching come to the rescue?  Doubtful.

Heading into Saturday, the Cubs have allowed 57 runs so far.  That’s barely the middle of the pack.  13 teams are worse, 16 are better.  With a couple of exceptions, the bullpen has more question marks than answers.

The starting rotation just lost its number five guy Adbert Alzolay so Alec Mills will fill that spot, thinning the bullpen even further.

Alzolay, who was optioned to the alternate site, is indeed a puzzle.  In two starts he posted a miserable 6.10 ERA, allowing seven hits, seven runs, and two home runs in just 10 1/3 innings. Yet he has a 0.968 WHIP.  That’s pretty head-scratching.

So don’t count on the pitching to rescue a weak-hitting lineup, not one this weak anyway.  The Cubs are at the bottom or near it in every offensive metric.  Willson Contreras’ elbow guard has more hits than Joc Pederson.

The real frustration is that the bats are woefully underperforming even by 2020 standards. Bryant and Contreras have shown occasional sparks of what they are but there’s no consistency.

So, when does the prescription of chill pills hit its use-by date?  So far no other team in the NL Central has proven they can run away with the division so we may have to chill for a while longer.

As long as no other team takes off with the division my patience is willing to wait out this hellish start.  But my or your patience isn’t what matters here.  The very mediocre pitching staff can’t sustain this head barely above water state the Cubs are in currently.  If the hitting doesn’t turn it around it’s not my patience that will wear thin, it’s the pitching that snaps first under that pressure.