Jim Hendry Not Ready to Call Team Sucky Without More Analysis

I am so over the top done with Jim Hendry.  I know there is a certain amount of spin that has to happen when a team is sinking faster than a coconut-laden European swallow and the fans that show up get three or four seats to themselves at the ballpark.  He has to say some positive things, but let's not pretend that this team has just ran into some bad luck.  Get a load of Carrie Muskat's latest blog entry:

GM Jim Hendry, who spent this past week watching the Triple-A Iowa team,

At least somebody was watching a decent baseball team. 

said he's not going to label the Cubs as buyers or sellers heading into the July 31 trading deadline.

He could label them as "horrible," "pathetic," "brutal," or "makes-us-want-to-gouge-our-own-eyes-out-shitty" instead.

"That doesn't apply to us," Hendry said Friday. "We'll analyze where we're going now this year and keep in mind what we're going to try to do in the future. We certainly have enough of a core group of young people in the system that they'll be here next year and another wave will be coming from Double-A and Triple-A soon.

You're going to "analyze" where we are going this year?  Are you fucking kidding me?  How did you say that without your pants literally catching on fire? 

Do you need Ari Kaplan to come in with a spreadsheet to show you how shitty this team is?  Do you need him to calculate your playoff odds that Accuscore has at 1.3% before the latest embarassment down at the Cell this afternoon? 

Are you watching the games at all?  What analysis is necessary?  Ramirez sucks.  Lee sucks.  Zambrano sucks.  They don't score unless they hit homeruns and no one but Tyler Colvin is any good at that and he doesn't even play every day.  They can't field.  They can't throw.  They can't run the bases.  There is no baseball activity at which you can point and honestly declare, "At least they do ________ well."  What the hell is there left to analyze?

"If we find ourselves out of the race -- which we're still not thinking that's a done deal -- if we do some things in July, we'd always have an eye to the future."

Do you even look at the standings at all?  It's not a done deal? What does this team have to do to close the deal?  Short of bringing back Aaron Miles, there really isn't much that can make this team worse than it is.

The one thing lacking? Consistency.

Carrie, seriously, one thing?  And that one thing is consistency?  Did Jim trick you into keeping your eyes on a swinging watch?  You should probably make sure you haven't also been tricked into giving away your ATM code.

"We're all just waiting for our club to try to play in consistent fashion," Hendry said. "A few weeks ago, everybody was ready to write both teams off. It's a credit to the White Sox for doing a job of getting back in the thick of it and on a huge roll.

Jim, the team has been playing consistently all year.  That is the problem.  What the hell is wrong with you?  Do you really think boldfaced lies are going to sell more tickets?  Cubs fans are stupid, but even they are not as stupid as you need them to be to swallow this garbage.

This has not been a rollercoaster season full of ups and downs.  The only thing that changes about this team is the angle at which the trend arrow is pointing down.  The only problem is that Lou was able to keep the shit together last year to mask the depth to which this team has sunk.  Even Lou is failing this year so there is no masking it.

I've provided a helpful diagram showing the Cubs' season trend in relation to the Cubs fans' place in the world.

"I don't focus on dates or deadlines or buyers and sellers. We need to focus on us putting a run of our own together now and play better baseball."

I guess it is hard to focus with your head stuffed so far up your ass that you can see the dozen donuts you had for breakfast. The only run that helps the team at this point is a 15-game losing streak that forces the Ricketts' hand to fire your ass.
 
Unfortunately for those of us who still watch this crap, that kind of losing streak looks not only possible, but entirely probable.