The major league-leading Cubs (83-47) dropped two of three in Los Angeles over the weekend, and then their flight to Chicago was delayed.
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Tony Watson came in for the save but, instead, a one-out was hit for a home run by Jorge Soler, which energized the Wrigley Field crowd. “We just came up short”.
Two batters later, Gregory Polanco capitalized on an elevated first pitch sinker and hit it to the opposite field for his 21st home run of the season.
Miguel Montero’s 13th-inning pinch hit drove in Kris Bryant with the winning run as the Chicago Cubs claimed an 8-7 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates in a game that stretched into early Tuesday.
“It has to be Cy Young contention”, manager Joe Maddon said of Hendricks’ season.
After that play, I moved down a little closer and that’s when the Pirates took a 7-6 lead on a Josh Harrison sacrifice fly. It fell 1 1/2 games back of St. Louis for the second NL wild card.
The tenth ended on a double play tag out of Javier Baez at home, mirroring a similar situation that ended the twelfth. “Even if you know the fastball’s coming, or the changeup’s coming, (when he executes the) pitch, you can’t do much with it”.
So when the Cubs opened the bottom of the 13th with three straight singles, and Dexter Fowler scored the tying run, well, I wasn’t surprised.
Josh Donaldson hit his fourth homer in two days tie the scores in the fourth inning, and Jose Bautista also went deep for Toronto, which went four games ahead of the Orioles.
“I really try to avoid those conversations because I could just mess him up”, Maddon said before Monday night’s series opener. He gave up two runs in 6 1/3 innings in Pittsburgh’s 3-2, 10-inning win over the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park. In his last 17 total starts, Hendricks has a 1.70 ERA, giving up three or fewer earned runs in every one of those games. I left their seats in the 10th, expecting an easy ending, and moved down a section behind home plate.
Active major league rosters can expand to as many as 40 players on Thursday, and Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein said the team isn’t ready to discuss in detail what it might do.
Pirates: RHP Tyler Glasnow (shoulder) was activated from the 15-day DL and optioned to Indianapolis, where he will make at least one start before the Triple-A season ends next week.
The 25 year-old right-hander owns a career-low 19.3 strikeout rate and career-high 1.39 WHIP with a 3.55 ERA across 114 innings of work this season.
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The magic number to clinch the NL Central is 18 after Hendricks crafted seven scoreless innings against a unsafe Pittsburgh lineup, not allowing a Pirate to go past second base while working efficiently (99 pitches, 61 strikes) during a clean game that lasted only two hours and 36 minutes. Chicago Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo swings on a two-run home run off Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Chad Kuhl during the first inning of a baseball game Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2016, in Chicago.
