It should be getting easier for Dodgers, but it isn't

"They're just about there," Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti said of the team's core of youngsters.

"They're getting to the point where with their experience you should start to see more than less, not less than more."

Taking that a step further, the Dodgers should be winning more than less, and they're not.

Their 3-1 loss to the Cubs on Sunday left them with a split of their four-game series and without a handle on where they're headed.

They thought they could build on winning the two middle games but were clueless at the plate in being held to four hits Sunday by Cubs starter Jason Marquis, who began the game with a 5.02 earned-run average, and reliever Carlos Marmol, who yielded the Dodgers' only extra-base hit -- an eighth-inning double by Juan Pierre.

"Our young players are no different than anybody else's," Colletti said. "They all have to get to the point where they can focus in and take it pitch by pitch by pitch. We need to do that. And that's going to take time.

"It doesn't crawl at the pace of the San Andreas fault, but it's somewhat like that. If you look at it every day, you're going to say, where's the progress?"

Meanwhile, Brad Penny -- a 16-game winner last season -- went a seventh straight game without a win, giving up three runs and six hits over six innings.

"When you look at the staff," Colletti said, "it's the one mystery to the staff."

The Dodgers don't need mystery, they need progress, and they're not getting it. This is a sub-.500 team that can't use inexperience and the absence of the injured Rafael Furcal as a crutch anymore.

"There's a difference between preparing to play and preparing to win," Colletti said. "As soon as we can transition into preparing to win, that's when you get better."

Now would be a good time to do that.

They've been getting strong performances from their starting pitchers the last few weeks but their offense remains erratic. Colletti and Manager Joe Torre, speaking separately but sounding alike, said too many at-bats aren't being used wisely. They're right.

Getting good pitching and insufficient hitting "has been pretty much our calling card," Torre said.

He added the Dodgers are "certainly better offensively than we've been showing," but we'll have to take his word for that now.