Chris De Luca writes in today’s Sun Times about what went wrong this season. He traces this season’s problems back to the Cubs’ postseason loss to the Dodgers. Specifically, he says, Lou’s desire to get a more left-handed team was the problem. He says that the roster moves made to get more left-handed - getting rid of Henry Blanco and Mark DeRosa - hurt the team’s chemistry and hurt their offense. He also suggests they should have kept Jim Edmonds around. He then concludes by saying the loss to the Dodgers “was no reason to overreact and tear up a 97-victory team that could’ve been just as dangerous in 2009.”

Now, I’m not going to accuse De Luca of being a hypocrite. After all, it’s totally fair of him to accuse the Cubs of overreacting by seeking to get more left-handed even though he wrote on October 31, 2008, “The Cubs and White Sox reached the playoffs, but October only exposed their most glaring needs. For the Cubs, that is a speedy leadoff hitter, preferably one who’s a switch hitter or bats left-handed — anything that would allow them to move Alfonso Soriano out of the top spot.” The Sun Times’ Web site doesn’t allow you to view that far back in the archives, but believe me, I didn’t make that up.

But really, what did the Cubs tear up, anyway? Three Cubs hitters got more than 150 plate appearances and did not return this year: DeRosa, Edmonds and Ronny Cedeno. Nobody is seriously suggesting the Cubs would be better with Cedeno this season. So that leaves Edmonds and DeRosa. Edmonds is out of baseball, and the fact that nobody was interested in him as a 39-year-old center fielder tells me something. He was good last year, but keeping him would have been a Gary Gaetti-esque situation where you pull a fading veteran off the shelf and he gives you a few good months so you make the mistake of trying to get even more out of him.

So that leaves, in spite of De Luca’s protestations that he’s not beating this drum yet again, DeRosa. DeRosa would have been primarily playing  right field for the Cubs if he’d stayed, so he couldn’t have offset Mike Fontenot’s disappointing production and he couldn’t have played third every day when Ramirez was injured, at least without making Reed Johnson an every-day player, and given how Johnson’s played this year, you wouldn’t want that. DeRosa is hitting .256/.323/.456 this year. Part of that is due to an injury he’s playing through. His replacement, Milton Bradley, is hitting .261/.395/.399. Bradley is hitting for less power than DeRosa, but you might notice that his numbers are actually better than the guy he replaced.

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