Chicago Cubs' Winter of Lies: A Better Bullpen and More Balanced Offense?

The sensation is like finding out your girlfriend cheated on you, the gut-wrenching agony when you know something had promise until the underlying reality collapses the house of cards.

That's how Cubs fans feel every time Lou Piniella goes to the bullpen.

The implosion has actually become the event at Wrigley Field these days. It is no longer whether or not the bullpen will lose the game, but how and who will carry the responsibility.

It's only Memorial Day, but hope on Chicago's North Side is starting to carry the mention of Jay Cutler more than October baseball.

But only the naive or insanely committed fans didn't see this coming. The moves Cubs GM Jim Hendry made were ridiculous this past winter, and now the play on the field is reflecting his empty attempts to reinvent the wheel.

Hendry promised that he would reconfigure a bullpen to be deeper than last year's edition, trying to find more arms with more flexibility. So he replaced Kerry Wood with Kevin Gregg, and brought in David Patton and Aaron Heilman to fill set up roles.

Mission accomplished?

The only lefty in the bullpen is still Neal Cotts, who, along with Heilman, carries a resume that mirrors that of Heidi Fleiss: a person who made millions of dollars sucking.

And Patton was the feel good story of the spring, the kid from the Rule Five Draft that was lights out and earned the final roster spot over an incompetent Chad Gaudin. He threw darts in Arizona and looked awesome.

Only problem with that Band-Aid was that when he stepped onto a legitimate major league mound and threw to guys that don't belong in Iowa or Birmingham, he's been the player that another organization allowed to be taken in the Rule Five Draft: average at best.

And Gregg? I'll grant you that Wood hasn't had a fantastic season in Cleveland, but there's a difference between Gregg being bad in Chicago or Wood doing the same thing. It's the concept of sweat equity, which Wood had more than a decade's worth built up with the fans of this city. Gregg came in from Florida and has done nothing but make people curse goggles.

But that's just my rant on the bullpen. Have I mentioned Hendry's other winter lie, the one about a balanced batting order?

The only thing about the Cubs batting order that's balanced these days is that nobody can hit, from two to nine. To date, the only player in the Cubs order that's hit worth a nickel is Alfonso Soriano.

In fact, the only player on the roster that gets a pass on this season is Aramis Ramirez, who's out with a bad shoulder. The rest of this roster can walk home down the middle of Lake Shore Drive as far as I'm concerned.

Hendry wanted to have versatility on the roster, so he traded Mark DeRosa to Cleveland for minor league pitchers. This is the DeRosa that could play any position on the field and hit 25 home runs.

In his place came Aaron Miles. Miles has fewer home runs in his career, 16, than DeRosa hit just last season. But he can switch-hit, so he's worth a two year contract to replace the veteran leader DeRosa.

Miles is hitting .204 and lost the starting second base job to Mike Fontenot coming out of Spring Training.

Milton Bradley was the biggest name added to the batting order this past winter, a switch hitter coming off his career best season in Texas. He would certainly hit for a high average, right?

After going 2-for-5, including his awe-inspiring fifth home run of the season, Bradley raised his batting average to .198 on the season.

Between Bradley chasing Mendoza, and Derrek Lee trying to find a new way to not play because of either an injury or illness not severe enough to go on the disabled list, this order is bordering on silly.

Frankly, this team is starting to remind me of the 2004 Cubs that dissolved down the stretch and played awful baseball to blow a division lead. The problem is, that team imploded after August 1; this team isn't even getting out of the gate.

This Cubs team is miserably bad, but it's exactly what Hendry built. Most fans saw this coming, now Hendry is watching it unfold on the field.

Heilman almost had federal bailout money paying for him to get out of New York he was so bad the last couple years. Patton wasn't good enough to get a shot at the majors with another team, so the Cubs handcuffed themselves to him being on their 25-man roster. And, the additions of Bradley and Miles are laughable.

But the issues go further. Carlos Zambrano has had issues with his stamina in the last couple years, and Rich Harden has never been able to stay healthy for more than six weeks at a time. So what did Hendry do to insure the starting staff wouldn't cost the team games when the inevitable injuries happened?

Nothing.

Derrek Lee hasn't hit the ball well since he hurt his wrist. Kosuke Fukudome was a huge disappointment last year. So how did Hendry build his bench?

Joey Gathright. The same as nothing.

This Cubs team makes me physically ill to watch right now, and I'm not sure what it's going to take to correct the issues they have on the field. I just watched them give up 18 hits to a Pittsburgh team that got owned by a struggling White Sox pitching staff over the weekend.

Just in case you didn't catch the number, or thought it might be an error, I'll say it again for effect: eighteen (18) hits for the Pittsburgh Pirates in nine innings against the Chicago Cubs. They scored 10 runs.

What pieces do the Cubs have that other teams would want in a trade? Heilman? Cotts? Triumph the Insult Comic Dog?

I'm not jumping ship, because I'm a fan of the Cubs. If you're a true Cubs fan, this has been reality for your entire life (unless you're my two-year-old son). The Cubs get close, don't get over the hump, so their clueless GM tries to reinvent the magic by demolishing the roster and starting over with junk.

I'm sick of this year's junk.

At least I can look forward to Jay Cutler, right?