(Photo by sideonecincy on Flickr)

Reds Awesome! Ok, that doesn’t work.

But you know what does work? Our bullpen. That’s right. Even withstanding the loss of the magnificent Ryan Madson and his spectacular changeup (I like to think of Ryan Madson and his oevre as an early 20th century magic act), the Reds bullpen has really come into its own recently. Partially this is because we put Chapman in the bullpen, and Aroldis has been really really good. But Ondrusek’s been great, Hoover’s  been good in his short callup, and even Alfredo Simon’s been pretty steady after his initial struggles. Not bad, considering that we’ve had no value from Madson, Masset, or Bray , who we assumed we’d be relying before the season. As noted on twitter and elsewhere, the Reds bullpen is building on a 20+ inning scoreless inning streak, which is not too shabs.

Here’s how the bullpen stacks up in various stats around the league, not counting tonight’s games.

• ERA: NL 1st, MLB 4th
• WHIP: NL 2nd, MLB 6th
• K/9: NL 1st, MLB 1st
• BB/9: NL, 10th, MLB, 23rd (I guess we have to be bad at something)
• HR/9: NL, 7th, MLB, 9th
• xFIP: NL, 2nd, MLB, 3rd
• WAR: NL 3rd, MLB, 6th

Yeah, that’s pretty great.