CHICAGO – The Cubs didn’t use a whole lot of energy Wednesday breaking down comments from White Sox pitcher Jake Peavy suggesting they had no business winning the first two games of the series.

Peavy pitched well Tuesday, but still couldn’t prevent a second consecutive Cubs victory as the White Sox dropped into second place. Afterward, Peavy made his feelings known that the White Sox defeats shouldn’t have happened.

“I don’t mean any disrespect, but a team playing the way the Cubs have been playing, we got to beat those teams,” Peavy said Tuesday night. “Please don’t take that out of context because the Cubs are a big league team and you got to show up every night because any team can beat anybody. But teams that we feel we should beat, that aren’t playing that well, we got to show up and take advantage of these opportunities.”
The sense around the Cubs locker room was they have nobody but themselves and their 24-44 record to blame for opponents making those types of comments.

“We don’t really worry about him,” David DeJesus said. “We only see them one more game and they do their thing and if we see them in the playoffs that’s awesome. But if that’s how he feels that’s how he feels. All we can worry about is how we prepare for every game and go out there and come together while the game’s going on.”

Manager Dale Sveum had no issue with it, understanding exactly where Peavy was coming from.

“Sometimes the record dictates those kinds of things,” Sveum said. “When you had won 20 games coming into the series and one team had won 35 or whatever, that’s the way it is. That’s the way you look at the schedule coming up: ‘Three first-place teams (coming up). We need to make up ground on these teams we’re playing.’

“That’s what we all do as a team and an organization. You feel you’ve got to make up grounds in these areas. ‘We better really play good ball this month because we’re playing these teams.’ That’s just the nature of the game.”

Internally the Cubs might have been fuming, but DeJesus insisted the team wasn’t going into the final game of the series with a chip on their shoulder.

“We want to go out there and win every game,” DeJesus said. “If he wants to say whatever he wants he can say whatever he wants. But ultimately when we get out there we want to win every game and we’re going to take it to them just like every team.”