As one reader mentioned this morning, while the Wittenmyer’s of the world try create their own controversy, there is something that is actually glaringly wrong with the 2009 Cubs.

The bullpen, she’s no good.

Mainly, because the guys down there aren’t throwing very many strikes.

In nine games, the Cubs’ bullpen has pitched 30 innings (the starters have pitched 50).

The seven clowns in the bullpen have walked 19 guys in those 30 innings.

NINETEEN!

The starters have walked 23 in their 50 innings, and that’s not good.

But 19 walks in 30 innings is horrendous.

As a pitching staff, the Cubs are walking 4.7 men per nine innings.  That’s up from 3.4 last year and 3.6 two years ago.  But here’s where it gets scary.  Remember the steaming pile of crap that was Dusty Baker’s 2006 Cubs?  You know, team that never walked, and walked everybody?

They pulled off the rare feat of being last in the league in walks and walks allowed.  Nice.

They walked 4.3 men per nine innings.  So great, the 2009 team is on pace to better that!  “Better?”  To worse it?  Oh, you know what I mean.

The main culprits are all of our favorites.  Neal Cotts has only walked two guys (he has hit one, though.)  Oh, but he’s only faced 14 guys.  In two and two thirds innings!  So he’s at 6.8 walks per nine innings.

Aaron Heilman has been fairly effective so far, but he’s walked four of the 21 guys he’s faced (6.4 per nine).

The Rule V White Rabbit is at 5.8 (three walks with 20 batters faced).

And our champion, with a whopping 11.3 walks per nine innings (the mind boggles) is none other than Kevin Gregg.  Awesome.  Job well done.

It’s nine games, so it’s hard to panic too much, but Lou’s going to get awfully tired of screaming at relievers to “throw fucking strikes.”  Even Carlos Marmol (3.9) is over the average for the entire team last year.  Then again, only one guy in the bullpen is under the 3.4 posted last season.

Luis Vizcaino.  He hasn’t walked anybody.  Lou also trusts him so much that he’s faced nine batters all season.  Yay?

How long before Sean Marshall is back in the bullpen full time and Jeff Samardzjia is down there, too?

(We’ll ignore the fact that Samardzjia walked 15 guys in 27 innings last year.)

Guh.

The walks per nine are only a symptom of the problem.  The Cubs are currently 13th in walks allowed, so they’re not last, but they are last in homers allowed, so that’s terrific.  Just like in 2006, it’s not just the walks, it’s all of the fat pitches thrown behind in counts to avoid the walks.

We know, because the media keep reminding us, that of last year’s opening day bullpen, only Marmol is left.  That seems like a good thing, considering that other than Marmol and Kerry Wood, we didn’t trust most of the guys stumbling out of that bullpen to try to get outs.  But so far nobody has really stepped up to help Carlos out.  It’s a week and a half, but still, wouldn’t it be nice if these dopes would start by throwing some strikes?

Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll start to throw strikes just about the time Kosuke starts to suck again.

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As you’ve noticed we’re not doing GameCasts of every day game this year.  For a simple reason.  A lot of them sucked.  So we’re doing fewer, and hopefully bette (so far, we’re 3 for 3), this year.  There’s a handy featue in the sidebar that shows when the next Gamecast is coming up.  For example, Sunday night against the Cardinals is our next one.

And, that is a special one.  The guys at Baseball Prospectus’ Baseball Daily Digest (www.baseballdailydigest.com) do live blogs during a select number of games during the year and they are kicking off their 2009 season with the Cubs-Cardinals game Sunday, and they’ve asked me to do it with them.  The best part, you get to play along, too.

So come on over Sunday night, it’ll be set up so you can log in here and we can all enjoy the verbal stylings of Joe Morgan and make jokes about The Genius.