Steroids crack leaves Theriot in comical mood

If Ryan Theriot takes any kind of performance enhancer, maybe he can call it the Piniella Performance Enhancer.

The Cubs shortstop readily answered questions Friday after a column in the Chicago Sun-Times stated that the 5-foot-11, 175-pound Theriot is a "suspect" in baseball's ongoing controversy with performance-enhancing drugs.

Theriot entered May with no home runs, but he has hit 5 since then to establish a career best.

The power burst came right after Theriot had a talk with manager Lou Piniella, who urged Theriot to start "driving" the ball instead of "guiding" it.

"The last time I checked, yeah, I was a professional athlete," Theriot said before the Cubs' game against Houston was rained out. "And an everyday player that's put up some decent numbers. I guess anybody can do anything if you set your mind to it. I've always been under that belief.

"To be honest with you, I feel like I can go out there and pitch if I wanted to. That's always been my thought process. So a few homers here and there, you've got to remember, it's only a few. It's not like I got 30."

The column in question wasn't about Theriot, but about the steroids problem in general. Theriot was mentioned apparently because he had never hit more than 3 homers in any season since coming up in 2006.

"It's just comical," he said. "I kind of laughed a little bit. I guess everybody's entitled to their own opinion. It's unfortunate, like I said the other day, that's it's come to this. I guess you can write whatever you want to write. It's up to the readers to formulate their own opinion."

Theriot said milkshake-type supplements were prevalent when he was in high school and in college at LSU. However, he said he stopped drinking protein shakes in 2005 or 2006.

"My supplements for the last four or five years have been Gatorade and water," he said.

Piniella termed the mini controversy "crazy."

"I asked him in St. Louis earlier in the year not to just think of right field exclusively," Piniella said. "Drive the ball. You're capable of driving the ball to left-center, right-center. I think it's absurd. Truthfully, not anybody, but mostly anybody in the big leagues is capable of hitting 10 or 12 home runs in today's game."

Theriot did maintain a sense of humor when asked what kind of pitcher he would be.

"Knuckleball," he said.

Rotation plans: With Friday's rainout, Lou Piniella said Randy Wells, who was scheduled to start Friday, will go Saturday, with Rich Harden going Sunday. Lefty Sean Marshall, who was scheduled for Saturday, will go to the bullpen for the weekend and will start Thursday in St. Louis. The Astros will start Roy Oswalt Saturday and Brian Moehler Sunday.

Better prepared: The Cubs will be without Milton Bradley for Saturday's game. He must serve a one-game suspension for his confrontation with umpire Larry Vanover last month.

"At least we're healthy, where we have a bench to use," Lou Piniella said. "The biggest problem that we had here for a long time was that we couldn't use people off our bench. I'd have managed a couple games, I know for sure, just a little differently if we'd have had some healthy players sitting on our bench."