Where will the Cubs finish?

The Cubs are being projected as finishing anywhere from second to fourth in the NL Central, with the St. Louis Cardinals being favored to finish first.

While the Cards will be pretty good, I just don't see their pitching staff being good enough to carry them to the postseason.  The Cubs, on the other hand, will have an excellent pitching staff, assuming Lilly comes back healthy.  Also, the Cubs added a real hitting coach in Rudy Jaramillo, while the Cards added a new hitting coach themselves in the form of Mark McGwire.  I have very strong misgivings regarding whether McGwire will be a good hitting coach for the Cards.  First, he's new to the position, whereas Rudy Jaramillo is a seasoned vet at hitting coach.  Jaramillo should have a positive influence on Soriano, for one, having worked with him very successfully at Texas. 

Second, McGwire was not a contact hitter.  He was a power hitter, who used steroids to add more power.  So why do we think someone who needed juice to help him hit homeruns, who never hit for average, is going to make a good hitting coach.  The best hitting coaches are not power hitters, they are contact hitters ... folks who had to learn how to hit to make it to the show because they couldn't just rely on their power to get them there.  You can't teach power, you can teach hitting.  But unfortunately for the Cards, I'm not sure if McGwire knows how to truly hit.

But, time will tell.  I may be wrong about McGwire just like the pundits may be wrong about where the Cubs will finish in the standings.

Quote from La Russa

Not that we want him - but here's what La Russa was quoted as saying about whether he would ever manage the Cubs:
"You've got a double-headed whammy there. I have a lot of friends and fans that I'm close to with the White Sox. And you know White Sox and Cubs, they don't mix. I've got friends and fans that I'm close to in St. Louis, and the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cubs don't mix. So I think if there is one place that I don't fit, just because of my past, it would be the Chicago Cubs."

Of course, this is the same bone head that thinks Mark McGwire will make a good hitting coach.  Did I miss something or did Mark McGwire never have a good batting average?  McGwire was simply a power hitter and an artificially induced one at that.  Power hitters are not good hitting coaches since you can't teach power.  Hitting is what you can teach.  But you need a hitter to do it.  Or someone who understands contact hitting, something Mark McGwire apparently doesn't.