The Cubs had just two hits off Davies through five innings – singles by Miguel Montero in the third and Javier Baez in the fifth.
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With one out in the ninth, Rizzo hit a drive to deep center. “That felt like a real baseball game, like, one you’re on the edge of your seat the whole game”. Jonathan Villar homered on Hammel’s second pitch, Ryan Braun had an RBI single, Domingo Santana singled in two runs and Martin Maldonado added a sacrifice fly.
Starting for the Cubs on Wednesday is de facto sixth stater Mike Montgomery.
An injury prompted him moving into the rotation and in his fourth start with the Cubs on Wednesday night, Montgomery turned in five strong innings, allowing one run and two hits.
One day after Maddon said Anthony Rizzo was getting Wednesday night off, the first baseman was back in the lineup after riding a two-homer Tuesday into the manager’s office to talk his way back in – and then he nearly duplicated Tuesday’s big performance. We got plenty of capable guys here that can pitch in big games.
Montgomery faced the minimum number of batters through three innings. “The overall body of work is really good, so I’m not going to beat myself up”.
The Brewers are back on the road, opening a four-game series tonight with the St. Louis Cardinals. Joe Smith took the loss.
Corey Knebel (1-2) pitched a scoreless inning in relief to get the win.
Tyler Thornburg worked the ninth for his ninth save of the season. Facing Alex Reyes, Kang deposited his 17th home run of the season into the bullpen in center field to give the Pirates a one-run lead, and Tony Watson made it stand up for his 11th save in the victory. Broxton jumped above the wall to make the catch.
I’m not sure if it actually played out this way, and if it did they’d never acknowledge it, but Joe Maddon allowing Hammel to throw 97 pitches in a game where he clearly didn’t have his best stuff-and in essence, forcing him to take one for the team-could be the manager’s snarky way of tossing it back at his lanky right-hander for publicly complaining about a quick hook just a few weeks ago.
Brewers: RHP Matt Garza (5-6, 4.57) will pitch against his former team for the second time this season. The Chicago Cubs offense continues to produce, and they’ve won 10 of their last 13 games when scoring more than three runs. “Watching him yesterday, he didn’t look exhausted so I put him back in”.
“I thought Davies threw well”, Coghlan said. “But with the night game after the day game he got some good rest”.
Hammel is 10-1 with a 2.50 ERA in his career against the Brewers, but Milwaukee was looking to change that today.
What’s more, St. Louis saw its streak of games with a homer end at 25, which tied a National League record set earlier this year by San Diego. He will make his second career start against Houston and first since June 2008.
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The Cubs are 7-0 in their last 7 Wednesday games and 9-4 in their last 13 during game 3 of a series.
