'Banged up' Cubs drop series finale to O's

There was little Lou Piniella could do Thursday but grin and bear an 11-4 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at Wrigley Field.

In fact, Piniella didn't even wait for questions in his postgame news conference.

"Well, when we started play in the American League East, and we saw the Yankees and the Red Sox weren't on the schedule, we felt maybe we caught a break," he said. "This is before we played Tampa Bay and Baltimore. Anyway, gear up for the White Sox tomorrow. What can I say?"

The Cubs swept the Sox last weekend at Wrigley, but today, the scene shifts to the South Side for three games at U.S. Cellular Field. But at least the White Sox are in the AL Central. The Cubs took two of three from the Toronto Blue Jays, but got swept in three by Tampa Bay and lost two of three to the up-and-coming Orioles to go 3-6 against the East.

The Orioles were sandwiched in between the White Sox series, but Piniella shot down any talk of a letdown or lack of emotion.

"I don't know about that," he said. "Emotion, to me, is good pitching and good hitting and solid defense. I call that emotion. If you want the other kind of emotion, you can go to a rock concert - or to church."

The Cubs fans in the crowd of 41,670 probably were praying for a rock concert to break out long about the third inning, when Cubs starting pitcher Jason Marquis gave up 5 runs. The Orioles batted around and got 3 hits that inning. In the fourth, they scored twice, and Marquis was done.

"It just wasn't very good today," said Marquis, who fell to 6-4 as his five-game personal winning streak ended. "After those first two innings, I started falling behind and leaving too many pitches out over the middle of the plate. I put my team in a bad position to win the game."

If the Cubs looked lackadaisical in the field, Piniella said he didn't see it. If it looked like center fielder Jim Edmonds was slow in getting to Brian Roberts' double in the big third inning, it's because the Cubs were playing Roberts the other way, toward left-center, and Edmonds had to make a long run, Piniella said.

If Derrek Lee was slow in getting to first base in the fifth on a double-play grounder, it's because he said he got jammed and couldn't get out of the box.

"We got beat," Lee said. "They scored 11 runs today. What are you going to do? They swung the bats well. It had nothing to do with a drop in emotion."

Of greater concern to Piniella are the nagging injuries that have hit his team lately. Right fielder Kosuke Fukudome's tight left calf kept him out of action for a second day in a row, and reliever Scott Eyre left the game with a strained left groin.

"I don't see any problems with hustle," Piniella said. "That's not the problems we have. The problem we have is we're all banged up. That's the problems we have. Outside of that, I got no complaints about anything else."