Hey, Tom Ricketts…the Cubs are now healthy, and they still suck!

What’s wrong with the team?

“Nothing, just a lot of injuries.”

Not quite.

Nobody bought that statement a month and a half ago, and nobody is buying it now.

The Cubs are healthy. The only players on the DL right now are Andrew Cashner and Marcus Mateo, neither of whom should have been considered vital to the team’s success this season.

Guess what. This team is worse than ever now.

They have lost 9 consecutive series.

They have dropped to 21 games below .500.

They suck.

I hate to be the one to tell Tom Ricketts this, but there is something else wrong with this team.

Here are some other disturbing warning signs…

Starlin Castro is not improving at all defensively. For a kid that has been said is extremely eager to learn and be coached, the coaching he is getting doesn't seem to be working. Based on what I said in the last sentence, I have to place the blame on the coaching staff for either lying about Castro’s teachability or for being unable to teach an eager player how to play better. This is Ivan DeJesus's responsibility.

Peña and Ramirez are hitting now…and it doesn’t matter. This team is still having problems scoring runs. Remember this spring when people blamed the weather for the lack of offense? Well the weather is literally hotter than hell now, and the Cubs are still not scoring runs with any consistency. The hitting guru, Rudy Jaramillo, still doesn't seem to be earning his lofty salary.

Carlos Marmol’s slider has become extremely flat. At the same time, his arm angle has slowly slipped more to the side. This is exactly what happened 3 years ago. Can Mark Riggins fix this?

This points to a very ineffective coaching staff with a manager that seems to be making questionable decisions on an almost daily basis. The Cubs were bad last season and instead of cleaning house, they instead promoted people from that failed system into positions of greater importance, and the results have been disastrous.

Jim Hendry seems unwilling to trade anyone as well as he sees great value in all of the players currently on the roster. How can all these players be keys to the future success of the team if they are failing so badly now?

So, Mr. Ricketts, what's wrong with this team? The players, the coaches and the front office...that's all. That's not to many things to fix in a few months, is it? It's not like that is everything? Right? Oh, I guess that is everything.

Wait, there is nothing wrong with the ballpark, right?

And, don’t worry my friends, Alfonso Soriano is still a Cub for 3 more years.

Observations after the first weekend

- At least on 2, perhaps 3, occasions so far this season, it appears the Cubs have missed signals coming in from the third base coach, Ivan DeJesus. Often times the players are blamed for these missed signals, but keep an eye on this because I don’t believe DeJesus is really well fitted to being a third base coach. I think it is completely possible that DeJesus may have mixed up the signals. If this were to continue, I think it would be fair for people to start calling for Pat Listach to assume that role instead. The Cubs have two 1st base coaches right now…unfortunately, one of them is coaching third instead.

- It is very apparent where the roof came off at the ballpark during the blizzard this winter…and it looks as if they didn’t make much of an effort to do a really good job at repairing it. That makes me think that a major redo of the entire pressbox is not too far off in the future. They wouldn’t have sunk much money into the repair of the roof right now if they knew they were going to have to replace it again anyway.

- What is Carlos Marmol’s history pitching back to back games?

- Castro is really, really good…but he still has a lot to learn.

- There seemed to be a significant lack of vendors in the stands during the games this weekend. What’s up with that? (Actually, there were plenty of beer vendors…but very little of the rest.)

- It looks as if significant sections of the concrete in the lower seating bowl were replaced this past off-season.

- The engraved brick pavers around the ballpark…particularly the ones at the corner of Clark and Addision…appear to be crumbling at a fairly substantial rate.

- The Pirates are a bad defensive club. The Cubs had ample opportunities to take advantage of that this weekend, and failed to capitalize on it. It’s only 3 games, but that is a sign of a club that probably isn’t going to very good. Good teams punish opponents that give them extra outs.

- Look, Kosuke isn’t a good leadoff hitter. Just keep Castro up there. Stop worrying about coddling this kid. If he can’t handle it, big deal! Move him out later. But for now, let’s just see if he’s got the goods for that.

- I don’t recall the Cubs ever having vendors selling cookies…but they did this year.

- Len and Bob have the windows taken out of their broadcast box already.

- After a game like Friday, where it rained all day and the grounds crew had to spread that kitty-litter crap all over the infield to keep it dry, how do they get all the stuff off the infield before the game on the following day? It’s amazing that you’d never know that they had spread they kitty-litter/diamond dry stuff all over the dirt the day before!

- I’m sorry, but Wayne Messmer > Jim Cornelison.

-Carlos Pena can pick balls out of the dirt damn well. The rest of his defensive abilities seem to be a bit overstated, though.

- Jeff Samardzija looks lost out there. In his appearance on Friday, he looked as if he was trying to alter his delivery on every pitch to try to find something that worked. It’s not necessarily Spellcheck’s fault that it has come to this, but if he wants to be a productive major league ballplayer, he needs to get a fresh start somewhere else.

- Mark Riggins…do something to impress me, please.

- Mike Quade’s handling of Ryan Dempster on opening day was a bit questionable. I thought Demp was done a couple of batters into the 6th inning. Most of the other fans around me felt the same. Lou Piniella had the same issue when handling Dempster the last couple years. Watch to see if Quade learns to recognize when Dempster is spent.

He did it his way: Matt Sinatro out as 1st base coach.

Today the Cubs announced that Ivan DeJesus will be taking over as 1st base coach for the 2010 season.

Those cubs of the early 80's sure had fun!

He replaces part time coach, part time lounge singer, Matt Sinatro.

He didn't hold on to Theriot's leash tight enough.

Sinatro was a bit of a character out at first...but didn't do much else out there.  DeJesus is probably there to try to help a less than stellar base-running team get a little better on the base-pads in 2010.  Or, at the very least, tether Ryan Theriot to the first base bag after get gets a base hit.

Sinatro will continue to work on his singing career and work as an instructor in the system, but will not be in the dugout during games.