I was reading David Haugh talking about the Bears this morning, and I was struck by a contrast between baseball coverage and football coverage. Haugh points out that the Bears don’t need Devin Hester to be a No. 1 receiver, because if he can just be a good player they can do well without him being a star.

Somehow there are people out there who seem to be unwilling to extend the same logic to baseball. Obviously you need players for different roles, just like you do in football. Olin Kreutz is not going to be able to step in at wide receiver for the Bears any more than Derrek Lee is going to take a turn in center field for the Cubs. But Haugh’s point is that whether the Bears call Devin Hester a No. 1 receiver or not, if he produces well that’s all that really matters, not whether he produces “like a number one.”

There’s no reason the same logic shouldn’t apply to baseball. If you have a strong rotation one through five, you don’t really need a Cy Young award winner up front. Yet I see people bemoan the Cubs’ lack of an “ace,” particularly in regard to whether Carlos Zambrano is or isn’t worthy of that title. See for example here, where the writer declares Zambrano not to be an ace and then lists a set of requirements that nobody he thinks of as an ace probably actually possesses. Let’s put aside whether Zambrano is an ace, though, and just assume for the sake of argument he isn’t — he’s just a good but flawed pitcher.

But who cares whether you have an ace? Or for that matter, whether you have a superstar on your team? The Cubs are a team that’s been built without superstars. Those of us who are statistically-minded know that, when playing to their true talent, most of the Cubs players are worth about two to four wins above replacement, apiece. There’s no player on the team who is Albert Pujols-caliber (actually, there isn’t really another player in the league who’s that caliber). But the idea behind how the Cubs are built is that, if everything goes right, there aren’t any weaknesses in the lineup, either.

You can take issue with the actual personnel decisions made, and obviously the team has had its weak spots this season, but I think that philosophy is a sound one. Obviously if you can have a superstar in a position, that’s great. But if you can’t, if you can put together a lineup with no easy outs, that’s the next best thing. If every player is a threat, opposing pitchers never get a break. And if every pitcher in your rotation is a strong one, you’ve always got a good chance to win a game, no matter what the pitching matchup looks like.

For all that’s gone wrong this season, the starting pitching has been good. Just like the Bears don’t need Devin Hester to be a superstar, the Cubs don’t need an “ace.” Having a solid rotation one through five is more than enough, and continued suggestions of jettisoning Zambrano are silly and make the people making them look awfully dumb.