I Just Don't Get it.

Strolling the boards and blog comments sections the same thing keeps popping up. "The Cubs strength is it's starting pitching. When we get to the playoff's we will need Clement more than Nomar."

Yeah ummmm news flash. If we get to the playoffs, Matt Clement will be coming out of the bullpen. Bench Wood? No. Bench Prior? No. Bench Zambrano? No. Bench Maddux? No. So the odd man that is out is Matt Clement. Would be nice to have Nomar in the playoffs than never seeing Clement huh?

The other comments I see are..... "Well what if Prior, Z or Wood get injured and we trade Clement? Then we have Rusch and maybe Mitre. That is too much of a risk!"

Yeah ummm news flash. Even with Prior and Wood missing time this team has the 1st or 2nd best ERA in the NL. Matt Clement is 7-8 with a 3.05 ERA and yet the Cubs are 54-46 while having one of the better staffs in the NL.

So why exactly is this team 54-46 with a top 2 pitching staff? It is the offense silly. Most teams have 2-3 good starters and win World Series titles and division titles all the time. We don't need 5 starters to be competitive. If we can trade one of them for some offense then that is what this team needs to do, because it is obvious that stellar pitching is getting this team no where fast. That should be plain as day to any Cubs fan who has sat down and watched any amount of Cubs games this season.

But since we have the chicken little fans not wanting to trade Clement for Nomar for fear of a starter injury, what would happen if Am-Ram or Lee went down for a period of time? Are we ready to see A-gonz and Macias dragging down an already putrid offense? We already suffered through the Rey Ordonez and Macias experiment that landed us 10 games back in the division. An injury to one of our offensive bat's and you might as well deep six the team.

This team has shown it can win with injured starters and shown it can't win with injured position players. If you want to peddle the injury route then the Cubs could ill afford an injury on the offensive side, but could easily afford an injury to the pitching side. Thus, Nomar Garciaparra's addition benefits this club in every aspect.