It's a few days after the tragedy of a baseball team not winning the World Series, and Chicago's media is still searching for explanations to this Great and Sudden Collapse. The latest? The crumb-bums should have traded for Brian Roberts!
In the bitter end, the difference might have been Brian Roberts, after all. Maybe he wouldn't have overcome the walks in Game 1 or the errors in Game 2, but the Cubs' woeful lack of playoff hitting comes down to two big deficiencies:
Notice, if you will, the contradiction in the first two sentences. The difference was Brian Roberts! Or maybe not, really, but still!
The reasons given here are: The Cubs have no "true" leadoff hitter (yes, they do: Ryan Theriot, though it doesn't matter because Alfonso Soriano is a terrible, inflexible meanie), and the Cubs need more "respected" left-handed hitters. Maybe. Or maybe the lineup that was arguably the best in all of baseball in the regular season had a bad three games, had them just as easily as they could have had three really good ones. Maybe wishcasting for Brian Roberts sort of misses the simple nature of the playoffs: The Cubs were really good, and then ... weren't. Just like the Angels.
Nahhhhh: It was definitely Brian Roberts.
