Going in to Friday's game against the Minnesota Twins, the Cubs starting pitching staff had the best ERA in all of baseball at 3.60, the bullpen seems to be bouncing back as well and with the addition of Andres Blanco, even the defense seems to be clicking. Cubs starters have put up an ERA of 1.60 in June and in 12 of the last 13 games Cubs starters have gone at least 6 innings. However, yet again the Cubs are returning home from a losing road trip. A road trip that just finished with two straight 1 run performances against the last place Houston Astros.

Of course the offensive struggles are nothing new. Cubs hitters have underachieved all season long. The Cubs returned 6 starters from an offense that last year scored more runs than the Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox or Rays, and added All-Star outfielder Milton Bradley, who led the entire AL in OPS last season. This year the Cubs offense ranks only 25th out of 30 teams in the league and only 28th with runners in scoring position. The controversial trade of Mark DeRosa and the injury to slugger Aramis Ramirez have set the Cubs back, but it has been far worse than that. Every hitter up and down the Cubs lineup is having a year worse than last year. The only exception is Kosuke Fukudome, who started out hot but has once again gone ice cold.

So how has the Cubs veteran fiery manager Lou Piniella responded to all these early season struggles? Surprisingly with positive energy:

"The manager blowing up isn't going to do anything," Piniella said. "You've got to play on the field. If anything, it's time for me to really be positive with this situation."

He even went as far as to tell his players to only look at tape of positive at-bats and base hits in film session and to put the negativity out of their minds. I gotta admit I was pretty shocked.

Well, all that positivity by Lou may finally be coming to an end. The Cubs hitting struggles may have finally gone a little too far for him. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported, when asked after Thursday's game about it Lou responded with....

''We just really did nothing,'' Piniella said of the finish to a 4-4 road trip that included three walkoff losses, the last two by 2-1 scores. ''Did nothing. And when we had chances, we were swinging at bad pitches out of the zone and can't make contact. Come on, this is major-league baseball.

''I know the game isn't the easiest in the world to play, because I played it for a long time. But it's not this damn hard. Come on. It's not this hard.''

Piniella has also shaken up the Cubs batting order for Friday's game. Moving Mike Fontenot in to the 2 hole and pushing Ryan Theriot and Kosuke Fukudome back in to the 6 and 7 spots. Catcher, Geovany Soto will hit in the 5th spot, despite a very rough start to the season. He has shown some power of late though and Lou may be trying to get him going. Seems like Lou is willing to try anything to get these guys going, and if they don't soon, we may start seeing more of the classic Lou blow-ups.

Still, after all the Cubs struggles they remain just 2.5 games out of first place in the NL central. Aramis Ramirez is getting healthy and has resumed baseball activities and Derrek Lee seems to be one Cub who is really starting to hit. For now all we can do is hope the Cubs gets healthy and the starting pitching continues to dominate. If the Cubs can keep it close, don't be surprised if they have a huge 2nd half and win this division in the end. If not, Cubs players better be ready for a very angry Lou Piniella.

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