The Cody Bellinger decision should be pretty easy, even for the Cubs

But it's apparent that they long ago made the wrong one

The Cubs came into the season with the following glaring holes on their roster:

• shortstop

• first base

• third base

• center field

• DH

• an entire bench

• two starting rotation spots

• closer

• most of a bullpen

And that’s just the specific positions. They also were in dire need of power, especially (but not limited to) lefthanded power.

So here we are on July 24, just a week away from the trade deadline, and if the Cubs do what everybody suggests they will, which is to trade Cody Bellinger and Marcus Stroman (and others) for prospects, they’ll enter this coming offseason in need of massive upgrades at:

• first base

• third base

• center field

• DH

• an entire bench

• three rotation spots

• most of a bullpen

An entire offseason and two-thirds of a season’s worth of roster moves will result in Dansby Swanson as a competent shortstop, Miguel Amaya as a quality catching option and Adbert Alozlay as a closer.

That’s it.

Granted, getting Swanson moved Nico Hoerner to second so they have a solid player there, but we’d already assumed that going into last offseason.

They spent an entire calendar year and will still lack nearly half a starting lineup, 60 percent of a pitching rotation five or six bullpen spots and a single productive bench player. They have no power because the guys they relied on to hit homers: Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Dansby Swanson and Trey Mancini have combined to hit fewer (30) than Shohei Ohtani has by himself.

Sure, the Cubs have gotten power out of Christopher Morel (15) and Patrick Wisdom (17), but they seem disinterested in actually finding Morel a position to play and Wisdom is too old and too overall unproductive (35 RBI on 17 homers is downright hilarious) to be of any real value.

How can you even pretend there was any progress this year?