This time of year, if a team that’s in a race for a playoff spot has a crying need or two, and it hears enough howling from the bleachers and the broadsheets, it usually does something about those needs. Sometimes the move is genuinely meaningful, and sometimes it’s just a matter trying to quiet the show-me critics and prove that the team acknowledges having a problem. In some instances, a team just flat-out makes a mistake, failing to resolve its problem (or problems).

Enter the Cubs, a team with playoff ambitions and fundamental problems. These aren’t just the usual broad-stroke problems that afflict contenders — the need for an extra bat, an extra reliever, or that ace starter who will put the team over the top. Instead, the Cubs’ issue is their almost complete lack of solid talent up the middle, a weakness made more jarring still by the ready availability of homegrown talent on hand to fix the club’s problems at catcher, short, and center field. But rather than make a commitment to the youngsters who will be a part of the next genuinely good Cubs team — as their chief rivals in the NL Central, the Milwaukee Brewers, have done with their own young talent — the Cubs are trying to play Dutchboy with their up-the-middle problems. The team has been trying to find enough fingers to stick in the leaks in the lineup by dredging up a crew of once- famous or vaguely adequate players who not only look as if they’re trying, but (if you squint hard enough) might actually convince people that they’re doing everything that could be done to fix their lineup, defense, and bid for contention.

This wouldn’t be the first time that a relatively modest move is hailed as a bold initiative. Swinging deals at the deadline is only becoming more difficult since teams have to sort out the financial issues involved with moving major contracts, and reckon with the reality that renting a free agency-bound veteran is a temporary solution, one that isn’t always worth a blue- chip talent. Not everyone in the industry wants to be the next Lou Gorman, who became famous in 1990 for dealing future Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell for middle reliever Larry Andersen to shore up the contending Red Sox’ bullpen. And no one wants to be the next Bill Lajoie, remembered for dealing a young John Smoltz from the Tigers to add Doyle Alexander from the Braves in the 1987 stretch drive.

So instead of true blockbuster deals, in which general managers risk the future to bring in what they think will put them over the top, the result is diffident deals designed to patch problems, sort of like what the Cubs have done to “fix” their catching problem, dealing a replacement-level backup catcher in Rob Bowen and a live-armed minor league lefty to the Athletics in exchange for a two-month-plus rental of the second-worst regular in baseball, catcher Jason Kendall, who is in the last year of the multi-year deal he signed with the Pirates back in 2002. The Cubs won’t pay much to employ Kendall — the A’s reportedly paid Chicago more than $4.5 million just to buy back the playing time to use on rookie catcher Kurt Suzuki — but the tragedy is that Kendall’s another weak-hitting veteran non-solution for a franchise in a desperately tight fight with the Brewers for the NL Central.

Where most teams expect to win through strong up-the-middle combinations, the Cubs instead are getting by with Kendall, and a Frankensteinian patchwork platoon comprised of disappointing veteran Jacque Jones and Mets castoff Angel Pagan in center field. The team has also cycled through the offensive limitations of Cesar Izturis and the defensive limitations of organizational soldier Ryan Theriot at shortstop. Now that Izturis has been dealt to the Pirates, there is, of course, the possibility that the Cubs may deal for another veteran stopgap at shortstop in the same way that they tried to paper over their problems at catcher by acquiring Kendall.

However, the true disappointment has been that the Cubs boast one of the most interesting trios of ready or nearly ready up-themiddle prospects in Triple-A Iowa. Behind the plate, they have 24-year-old Geovany Soto, a Puerto Rican prodigy picked in the 11th round of the 2001 draft who’s hitting .341 AVG/.412 OBA /.584 SLG with 12 homers and 30 walks in 226 at-bats. At shortstop, last year’s prematurely promoted rookie Ronny Cedeno is regilding his prospect laurels by hitting .362/.430/.559; he’s also only 24. In center field, the I-Cubs are using Felix Pie, .366/.418/.584, albeit in only 38 games, as he’s split time between the cornfields and the “Friendly Confines” of Wrigley, hitting only .216/.272/.345 in 152 plate appearances. Only 22, Pie is the youngest but also the one with the most upside.

All three are gifted defenders, and although all of them could stand to learn a thing or two about plate discipline, none are waiting for a talented veteran to move out of their way. Instead of playing its young talent, however, in their desperation and fear, the Cubs are using veteran fillers and getting very little to show for it. (The virtue of a solid rotation keeps the Cubs in ballgames.) This aversion to risk stands in stark contrast to the club’s rivals in Milwaukee, where the Brewers are leading the NL Central by reaping the benefits of their willingness to trust the merits of a young infield and an outstanding collection of homegrown talent. If the Cubs come up short, it will not be because they didn’t try, but because they didn’t try hard enough, and because they lacked the courage to trust their own homegrown talent.

Ms. Kahrl is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art commentary, visit baseballprospectus.com.