Piniella looking for more help from Cubs starters

As much as Cubs manager Lou Piniella was upset with his bullpen after Thursday's loss to the Cardinals, he said he needs more from his starters, too.

Carlos Zambrano was hardly great in Friday's 8-7 victory over St. Louis, but he chewed up 7 innings. In their first 10 games, the Cubs have 5 "quality starts." But Sean Marshall went only 5 innings Thursday, and Rich Harden lasted only 3 Wednesday.

"Yesterday, it didn't have a good day," Piniella said of the pen. "What we need, really, is a little more from our starters. If we get more from our starters, we don't have to get as deep in our bullpen. That's not one of our strengths. We've got to get a little more out of our starting pitching, and we need one or two more guys in that bullpen to step up, and hopefully they will."

One of the big problems leading to a taxed bullpen is that the starters have been running up big pitch counts.

"We've got to watch pitch counts early in the season," Piniella said. "We've done that for two years here, and we've kept our starting pitching relatively healthy. Early in the year, (when) the starters are developing more arm strength and stretching out more, you place more importance on a bullpen because they're going to be pitching more innings in a baseball game.

"Our starters, we limit their pitch counts to the low 100s if we can get them there, and usually, early in the season with the colder weather and so forth, that's usually about 6 innings. If we can get into the seventh with them, it really helps our situation."

Milton mum: For the second straight day, outfielder Milton Bradley declined to talk about Thursday's ejection and the possibility he might be suspended by Major League Baseball.

Bradley has not started since Sunday, when he strained his right groin. He was tossed from Thursday's game after being called out on strikes by umpire Larry Vanover. The Cubs said they had not heard from MLB on whether it might suspend Bradley for possibly making contact with Vanover.

"I don't know what I can say," Lou Piniella said. "I sent him up there to hit. Three and two pitch didn't look like a good pitch to me. Again, umpires- I don't know how to answer your question, I'm going to be honest with you. If I don't know how to answer it, I might as well not."

Piniella also seems antsy to get the oft-injured Bradley back into the lineup.

"He's getting better; he's just not quite there yet," Piniella said.

This and that: Mike Fontenot broke an 0-for-14 skid with a second-inning single- Geovany Soto was 0-for-12 before singling home a run in the fifth. Soto took his first walk of the season, and Lou Piniella want to see more of that- Derrek Lee has multihit games three of his last four times out- Kosuke Fukudome has 8 extra-base hits in his last 8 games.