Coleman’s rough year continues as Cubs fall to Mets

There’s a good reason the Cubs had to sign the likes of Doug Davis, Dave Bush, Rodrigo Lopez and Ramon Ortiz this year.

A farm system once built on pitching — or on the hope of pitching — has turned up dry in that department.

When Randy Wells and Andrew Cashner went down with injuries during the first week of the season, there were precious few homegrown options.

One of those options, Casey Coleman, started Friday night’s 5-4 loss to the New York Mets at Citi Field.

Coleman did not figure in the decision, as reliever Sean Marshall gave up the game-winning RBI double to Justin Turner in the bottom of the ninth inning after the Cubs had tied the game in the top half on Darwin Barney’s run-scoring single.

“Just kind of hung that curveball down the middle and Turner put a good swing on it,” Marshall told reporters. “The ball stayed in the air for a while, the ball kind of carried and that was it.”

Coleman’s year has been a disappointing one after he finished strong in 2010.

His record held at 2-7, with his ERA rising from 6.61 to 6.65. In Coleman’s 14 starts, the Cubs are 3-11. His previous 2 starts heading into Friday were quality starts, but for the season, Coleman has lasted at least 6 innings only three times and 7 innings only once.

Once upon a time, the Cubs attempted to be an organization that tried to draft and develop pitchers. That’s when Andy MacPhail was team president. But highly drafted pitchers such as Ben Christensen, Bobby Brownlie and Mark Pawelek never panned out, nor did many middle-round pitchers.

Coleman was a fourth-rounder in 2008, when the Cubs drafted Andrew Cashner No. 1. Cashner returned to the mound in relief Friday after missing five months with a strained right rotator cuff.

Other pitchers drafted in ’08 have had either cups of coffee (Chris Carpenter) or simply aren’t ready for prime time (Jay Jackson).

So the Cubs had to piecemeal it.

Last year, the Cubs took unheralded right-hander Hayden Simpson in the first round, but he got sick shortly after being selected and had a disastrous season in the minor leagues this year. This year, the Cubs did not take a pitcher until the fourth round, when they went for Chicago-area product Tony Zych, a reliever. They gave a big signing bonus to 14th-rounder Dillon Maples to lure him away from college ball.

Neither Zych nor Maples will be ready for a while, which means whoever the new Cubs general manager is will have to search for at least one and maybe two major-league starting pitchers this winter.

As far as Friday’s game went, Carlos Pena hit his team-leading 27th homer in the third inning to give the Cubs a 2-0 lead. Bryan LaHair had a run-scoring triple in the fourth. But Coleman gave up 3 in the fourth and 1 in the fifth as the Mets went ahead. Barney’s two-out single in the ninth tied it, but Marshall suffered a rare bad outing.

“We battled it all the way to the end and we gave ourselves a shot,” Pena said. “We had one of our best on the mound and they beat us. That’s the only way to look at it.”