The Cubs starting outfield of Alfonso Soriano, Kosuke Fukudome and Milton Bradley has been pretty bad from the offensive side of the ledger. Here's how bad:

Player	Games	GS	AB	Runs	Hits	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	IBB	HBP	K	SB	CS	SH	SF	GDP	BA	OBA	SPct	OPS
Alfonso Soriano	58	58	249	40	57	14	0	14	27	22	4	2	66	6	2	0	1	2	0.229	0.296	0.454	0.750
Kosuke Fukudome	53	47	177	30	47	12	1	5	22	37	1	2	42	4	4	1	2	3	0.266	0.394	0.429	0.823
Milton Bradley	47	38	141	20	32	5	1	5	16	20	1	3	29	0	0	0	0	6	0.227	0.335	0.383	0.718
Totals			567	90	136	31	2	24	65	79	6	7	137	10	6	1	3	11	0.240	0.340	0.429	0.769

For comparison, if you projected out Ryan Braun to 567 at bats, he'd have 34 homers and 115 RBI at the pace he's on right now. Carlos Lee would have 27 homers and 100 RBI.

But, it gets worse. If you factor out April, the numbers for these three are a batting average of .222; OBP of 309; SLG of .372; and an OPS of .680 with 11 homers, 34 RBI to go with 90 strikeouts and 44 walks.

Putrid.

It's hard to see how the Cubs plan to stay above .500 with performance like this over a full season. These are guys who Jim Hendry hired to be cornerstones, not dead weights. Now, you could "keep the faith" and say that they all have to get better. Soriano will do what he always does and get hot for 2 weeks and go from being an anchor on the teams offense to actually carrying it. Fukudome can't have tracked the same as he did last year and be good, then terrible (how could he have been good for 6 weeks?). And Bradley has to start having numbers somewhat similar to his career norms.

But it's also possible that no team will throw Soriano anything other than a slider away until he stops swinging at it, Fukudome will continue to imitate a "Sit N' Spin" and Bradley will wish that the disabled list came with frequent flyer miles.

There are no guarantees here. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.