Piniella dealing with reality of injuries
Cubs fans, Lou Piniella tried warning you.
The Cubs' manager was worried injuries would knock his high-flying team off the track a bit and that's what he believes has happened.
By losing to the White Sox 5-1 at U.S. Cellular Field Sunday night, the Cubs have dropped three in a row, five of their last six and eight of 12.
With their grip on first place in the NL Central down to just 2.5 games over St. Louis, the Cubs now head out for a week on the road, where they are 16-22.
"What we need to do is ride this little wave that we're on out and start getting our people back and things will take care of themselves," Piniella said before the game.
After the game Piniella had nothing to say. He was ejected in the second inning for the first time this season for arguing a check swing on Joe Crede and didn't talk to the media.
"We're frustrated," said bench coach Alan Trammel. "You want to win. We're used to winning and we need to get back on our winning ways."
Outfielder Reed Johnson comes off the DL Thursday and Carlos Zambrano the next day to pitch against the Cardinals. Alfonso Soriano shouldn't be too far behind them in a return to the lineup. At least that's the hope.
"This is not doom and gloom; this is reality," Piniella said. "It's something that I've been concerned about. I tried telling you people about it a few weeks ago, but when you're 20 games over .500 the sky's never falling. Now we've just got to ride it out, and we will - just get back to our health and we'll be in good shape."
The Cubs got little going against Mark Buehrle, now 4-0 with a 1.15 ERA in his last 5 starts.
"He mixed his pitches good and gave us some problems," Cubs catcher Henry Blanco said.
Sean Marshall didn't pitch poorly in his second start for Zambrano. He allowed 3 runs on 5 hits in 7 innings, but 2 of them were homers to Carlos Quentin and Brian Anderson.
"They get their runs off homers, and that's what they did," Marshall said.
Marshall likely is the odd man out of the rotation when Zambrano returns on Friday in St. Louis.
Piniella will keep Sean Gallagher in the rotation, at least through his scheduled start on Thursday against the Giants.
"My initial thought was to put a nice young arm like Gallagher in the bullpen and let him help with some power coming out," Piniella said. "I thought that his value to our team the way we're constituted would be more useful two or three days a week out of the bullpen as opposed to starting every five days, but that remains to be seen."
Piniella's tinkering with outfield lineups and his bullpen will continue until the injury list shrinks.
"We're playing makeshift, and you try to do the best you can," Piniella said. "You can keep losing people and continue to play the way you played, it's just that simple. I'm not making excuses. It's just a matter of fact."