How do you solve a problem like Marmol?

It seems like so long ago that Carlos Marmol was baseball's most unhittable pitcher, doesn't it? Now, it appears that three months of overuse have left him gassed and put the Cubs in a tight spot regarding the relief corps. On May 14, Marmol's ERA was 1.04; it was as low as 2.09 as recently as June 15. In his next appearance, four days later at Tampa, Marmol entered the game with a 3-1 lead, then walked two men and hit two more. He was yanked for Scott Eyre, who proceeded to allow a grand slam; despite not allowing a hit, Marmol was dinged for four earned runs, shooting his ERA to 2.93. In his next appearance, two days later against the White Sox, he entered with an 11-5 lead. After walking the leadoff hitter, he got two quick outs - then walked the bases loaded and allowed a run on a wild pitch. Once again he allowed a run despite not even giving up a hit.

The next two games were fairly uneventful - he threw an inning in the first and second games of the Baltimore series, allowing one total hit and walking no one. Then came Saturday. Marmol was brought in to start the seventh with the game tied at five; on an 0-2 pitch, he threw a high fastball to Carlos Quentin, who was able to put just enough on the ball to let it carry into the seats. Following that debacle, Marmol again got three days of rest prior to his appearance against the Giants last night. He came into the game with a 5-2 lead in the seventh and struck out the first two batters... then walked Travis Denker on five pitches, allowed a single to Fred Lewis, and then threw a first-pitch fastball to Ray "I Have Two Home Runs All Year" Durham. The fastball rose right into the zone, and Durham hit it out to right field to tie the game.

Marmol still has a devastating breaking ball, as he showed with the two strikeouts. But he's got a problem now. His command has gotten shakier - and let's not forget that even at his most dominant, his command could be an issue; remember all those at-bats where he'd leap to a 3-0 count, then manage to come back for the strikeout? He can't do that now, because he doesn't have the same fastball. Where it was touching high 90s earlier in the year, it now seems to top out around 93, and he just can't blow guys away with it. The same batters who would have been swinging futilely at a high 98-mph fastball are now jumping on 92-mph fastballs up in the zone and parking them in the seats.

Is Marmol masking some minor injury, or is he just tired? Yesterday on Baseball Prospectus, John Perrotto quoted a scout who said of Marmol, "He looks really tired to me, his arm is dragging, and his stuff isn’t as crisp. He’s a helluva young pitcher but [manager] Lou Piniella has been forced to ride him really hard this season and the wear and tear is showing." Marmol has already thrown 48 innings in 43 appearances after going just 69.1 (in 59 games) all of last year, and for a while he was on pace to throw well over 100 innings as the early-season struggles of guys like Howry made it more difficult for Lou to keep Marmol out of games. (Just ask Joe Torre what it's like to be a veteran manager who only trusts a few of his relievers.) He's also already given up 19 ER, eight more than all of last season - but 12 of those have been since June 1. So what do we do?

1. Give him a break.
Even three days off between games doesn't seem to be helping right now, so maybe Marmol just needs to be shut down for a while so he can rest. The question is, is there any way that a couple weeks of rest is enough? You can't possibly justify putting him on the shelf for longer than that unless he's actually injured, which I don't think is the case, and even while the fastball isn't there, his breaking ball is still good enough to get guys out if he can get a fastball over early in the count. But you can't always rely on that, as we saw last night.

2. Less use of the fastball.
There's always some risk that he'll just start firing fastballs all over the place, whereas the breaking ball is reliable and pretty much unhittable. Of course, if he turns into a one-pitch guy, that breaking ball will probably start to get more hittable as guys see a lot more of it. Still, I've seen at-bats where he's just buckled a guy's knees with three straight breakers right at the bottom of the strike zone, so it wouldn't be impossible.

3. Just use him less.
Lou doesn't seem to have a lot of trust in the bullpen beyond Marmol, but most of them have at least been decent this year. Ascanio looked pretty good in limited action before giving up a homer to Jim Thome on Sunday (but let's not forget that WWE officials were working that game); Cotts has been decent; Howry seems to be getting into form; Wuertz has a low ERA in spite of some command issues; Lieber has been solid pretty much every time he's come in but has appeared somewhat sporadically because of his assigned role as the long man. If all else fails, you could call up Hart (though it looks like he'll probably stick as a starter in the minors for right now and be brought up in that role maybe in 2009) or Pignatiello (who's been good in recent outings at Iowa, though his stats for the year are kind of ugly). And if all else fails, you could trade for a reliever in the next few weeks, although teams always end up overpaying for relievers and I'm not sure if there's a difference-maker out there.

Still, something has to be done, right? I don't think we can just keep doing what we've been doing when Marmol has been a time bomb recently. Thank God for Mike Fontenot.