No regular season game gets more overanalyzed than the first one.  It’s only natural, we have nothing else to compare it to.  On Wednesday, the Cubs will play again, and we’ll have yesterday’s game to compare it to (spoiler alert: it probably won’t end well, either), then Thursday, and on and on.  But opening day exists in a vacuum at least for 48 hours or so.

For the Cubs, or any team that loses the opener (cue Jim Deshaies joke about not being able to serve beer), viewing the game under a microscope is a tedious and unfulfilling exercise.  Come to think of it, watching the Cubs play is a tedious and unfulfilling exercise.

Through the lens of just one game we KNOW these things to be undeniably true:

• Anthony Rizzo can’t hit at all
• Emilio Bonifacio is the greatest leadoff man ever
• Mike Olt looks stupid wearing number 30 and needs to pick a better number
• Luis Valbuena will never make an out
• Sketchy Jeff Samardzija is a dominant ace pitcher and the Cubs should throw money at him
• The new alternate road uniforms are actually worse than the Cuba ones they used to wear
  
• Pete Ricketts named his son Roscoe, and the little shit deserves it:
  
• Rick(y) Renteria likes to bunt…way too much.  You’d think the front office might have mentioned to him at some point not to do that.
• Instant replay will always screw the Cubs.
• Every batter will homer off of Carlos Villanueva this season.
• Welington Castillo has three balls

When Pissburgh announced Francisco Liriano was starting the opener it was pretty much ordained that the Cubs were going to struggle offensively.  He owned them last year, and yes, they shuffled some of the guys wearing the laundry between seasons, but the Cubs are going to struggle against average lefties this year, so throwing a dominant one of them is a pretty safe bet.  They did not disappoint.

Let’s try not to make that much of this.  It’s one day.  Just one day.  Besides, what could you make of it anyway?