It's snowing in Chicago...

and that can mean only one thing - it's opening day at Wrigley Field (technically, that was yesterday, but I messed up posting this, so it's a day late). Wrigley is the place where hope springs eternal, before landing awkwardly and breaking its neck.

The Cubs have hope this season, if only because they are in the worst division in baseball. They could just as easily finish 5th as 1st. Maybe only a few games will separate those teams.

They added Alfonso Soriano to the lineup, which means they have a better chance of out-scoring their pitching. It's a pretty imposing lineup with Soriano, Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez in it, but the Cubs probably can't afford too much DL time from any of their regular players because other than Cliff Floyd, there's not much behind them.

Mark Prior and Kerry Wood went from having a rotation built around them to having rotator cuffs rebuilt (along with the rest of their arms) and neither will see the mound for the Cubs this season. Now the Cubs are trying to find help for Carlos Zambrano. Lefty Rich Hill looks pretty promising. At least he's throwing strikes. Ted Lilly will be pretty reliable too after coming over from Toronto. The Cubs may end up going as far as Cardinal reject Jason Marquis and still-recovering Wade Miller can take them as 4th and 5th starters.

The Cubs bullpen didn't get much help in the offseason. Ryan Dempster is still the closer, and the setup guys are still Scott Eyre and Bobby Howry. Eyre has given up five runs in his two appearances and Howry has already coughed up two games, so the starters better have some endurance.

The biggest new face for the Cubs is manager Lou Pinella, and his presence guarantees that the Cubs will be entertaining, if not good. Maybe more entertaining if they're bad, although I'll take boring and good if being boring is what it takes to be good. I would expect the Cubs to be more fundamentally sound this year, although there have already been some boneheaded plays. Pinella will be less tolerant of that stuff than Dusty Baker was.

The other big piece of news with the Cubs probably won't actually take place until after the season, but the team is going to be sold. That came about because their parent company, the Tribune, is being sold to gazillionaire Sam Zell. It doesn't look like Wrigley Field will be sold with the team though, which could make negotiations for the Cubs interesting.

Time for the bold prediction: If the Cubs stay healthy (relatively speaking), I think they'll win the division, although like I said, that's not really much of an accomplishment this year. After that, anything can happen. With the Cubs, that's usually bad.