Cubs' big three come up empty

Call them the Cubs' big three, but they came up a big zero in the first-round sweep at the hands of the Arizona Diamondbacks.The numbers -- or lack of them -- put up by Aramis Ramirez, Alfonso Soriano and Derrek Lee pretty much told the story of why the Cubs went three and out in the National League division series.bull; Ramirez was 0-for-12 with no RBI and 5 strikeouts.bull; Soriano batted .143 (2-for-14) with no RBI and 4 strikeouts.bull; Lee hit .333, but drove in no runs and struck out four times."We tried to do too much," said Ramirez. "Some of our offensive players, at playoff time, the adrenalin takes over -- we just didn't hit. And if you don't hit, you don't win."The Cubs' 5-1 loss in Game 3 on Saturday made for a grand total of 6 runs in the series."We didn't get it done," Ramirez said. "They've got good pitching, but we should do better than we did."They outpitched us, outplayed us and outhit us. You can't win if you are outplayed in all those categories."The Cubs signed Soriano to an eight-year, $136 million contract as a free agent during the off-season to come through in critical situations, but his lack of success in the postseason continued.In 41 career postseason games, Soriano has batted .225 with 49 strikeouts. Soriano was booed loudly by the fans before he made the last out of the game on a harmless flyball to right field."We tried very hard to win here for the fans, and they can do whatever they want," Soriano said.After a torrid September in which he helped carry the Cubs to the playoffs, Soriano proved to be no Mr. October."I'm a little surprised," Soriano said. "I had a good September, but I think in a short series like that they made very good pitches and didn't make any mistakes."We didn't play the way like we were supposed to play. I think myself, I tried too much. I think that was the key, everybody tried too much. Sometimes when you try too much you're not relaxed at the plate."In the whole series we didn't have the big hit," said Soriano. "In a short series you have to score a lot of runs, but we didn't do nothing."Lee was emotional as he tried to find the right words to explain what went wrong."I really don't know what to say -- we just got outplayed in a short series," Lee said. "We had a shot to win a world championship and we didn't take advantage of it."All four of Lee's hits in the series were singles."We should have hit the ball better," he said.Up and down the Cubs' lineup there was failure. Jacque Jones hit .222, Cliff Floyd was 0-for-5 in two starts, and Ryan Theriot batted .250.The Cubs grounded into four double plays Saturday and were 2-for-23 in the series with runners in scoring position."We didn't capitalize when we needed to," Floyd said.Soriano credited the spunky Diamondbacks, who trailed for only a half-inning in the entire series."A lot of people, they're not giving a lot of credit to those guys because they're young and they don't have the big names," Soriano said. "But they played good and we have to give them a lot of credit."