Oh Venus!When the pitching goes, it really goes, doesn’t it? After four straight strong starts the wind and a shaky Greg Maddux put an end to that run in a 10-6 loss to the Brewers yesterday. The loss was not surprising considering that a) these are the Cubs, b) it’s tough to sweep anybody and c) Dusty pulled the lineup out of a hat.

Yesterday’s random lineup excepted, the Cubs can not continue to use Corey and Neifi at the top of the order unless their goal is to squander the long-awaited health of their pitching staff.

Corey’s numbers as a leadoff man are beyond woeful. He’s 24-110 (.218) with an abysmal .271 on base average.

Neifi’s numbers batting second are much better, he’s 50-168 (.298) with a slightly less than mediocre .324 on base average, but much of that production occurred during his May hot streak. In June, Neifi’s hitting .229 with a .299 on base average.

The Cubs have the best player in baseball so far this year batting third. How can you continue to squander that by having him bat with two outs and nobody on?

Dusty’s answer is that he can’t bat Todd Walker first or second because he needs him batting behind E-ramis for E-ramis to get any pitches to hit. What, Michael Barrett can’t hit back there?

In a perfect world, Dusty would realize that “lineup protection” is overrated nonsense. He’d bat Walker and Barrett at the top of the order. Besides, Todd Hollandsworth is batting .351 in June with a .364 on base average so he could provide that mythical production for E-ramis.

In fact, if you want Walker batting sixth so badly, why not have Hollandsworth lead off until Jim Hendry goes out and gets a new left fielder?

The point is that ANY Cubs batter would be better to have leading off than Corey and just about any of them would be better in the second hole than Neifi.

The Cubs do not have a good enough offense to play with the handicap of having their two worst hitters get the most at bats. Maybe the ’27 Yankees could have done that for kicks, but the 2005 Cubs can’t get away with it.

Even Bruce Miles has it figured out.

You can’t tell me that Dusty doesn’t realize this. We mock him but he’s not really dumb. He’s stubborn, but he’s not dumb.

What this reminds me of is in 2003 when he passively-aggressively got Jim Hendry to trade for a third baseman by using Lenny Harris there to showcase just how desperate things were. It’s almost like he says to Jim, “Hey, if you don’t want to get me a leadoff hitter, I’ll use Corey there, dude. How do you like that?”

That fact is if you took the Cubs’ lineup card today and penciled in Derrek Lee, Jeromy Burnitz and E-ramis in the 3-4-5 spots and put Corey, Neifi, Hollandsworth, Walker, Blanco and Prior’s names in a hat and pulled them out, even if you ended up with Prior and Hank batting 1-2 it wouldn’t be worse than having Corey-Neifi.

Granted, E-ramis is unlikely to play today because he got whacked in the shin with a Chris Capuano pitch yesterday, but even throw the great Jose Macias into the mix and if he ended up first or second it’d be an improvement, and he’s got a .290 on base average this year. Woof.

In baseball who bats in front of you is a lot more important that who bats behind you. You can’t drive anybody in if they’re sitting on the bench. If we didn’t know that before, we’ve had it carved into our brains the last two weeks.