Mark Grody

processing the kate horton news because when a guy goes out there and throws five and two-thirds scoreless you're like well this this means we may not have to lower our bar for what the expectations were at least for the regular season you you still feel like you have a puncher's chance or better than a puncher's chance at winning this division i don't know man i i think similar to what russ dorsey said

Oh, no.

The blow is big, and I would zoom out even more and be like, hey, you thought you had a good shot depending on how well

The players played on your team, hitting, pitching, defense, of being in the conversation for World Series.

Losing Cade Horton specifically as the ace greatly takes away from that overall goal.

No, I think that's fair, but I will say this.

If Javier Assad is going to pitch, not even like he did yesterday, but in that neighborhood, then it's still going to be the same problem.

Is your offense consistent enough?

I think for the playoffs, no.

I think they can get to the playoffs, though, with what they have as long as the offense performs as you expected the offense to perform.

What I'm saying is I think the Cade Horton value in missing him is much more of a playoff problem than it is a regular season problem unless more guys get hurt in your starting rotation.

I think they can maintain with the understanding that Justin Steele is coming back, with the two guys they have slotted in right now,

In terms of Colin Raiden Knight, Javier Saad, what we saw last night, those guys can be ample enough as long as your offense is doing the offensive things you expected it to do at the start of the season.

Yeah.

No, no, I'm saying the whole point, though, was you went out and got Alex Bregman so you wouldn't have the offensive problems of the second half last year.

My expectation was the offense was going to be better.

If it's not better, the Cubs are in trouble, regardless of if Cade Horton's on the mound or not.

Because that's a regular season thing.

Because that's what they do when Miles Michaelis is on the mound.

Yeah, I think the offense is going to be fine.