Twenty days later, that path to the postseason is all but bricked off. They gained a game on Pittsburgh trailing them by just two now for the first wild card in the NL while extending their lead on the Giants for the second spot to 7.5 games.
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The good news: the Giants’ preferable path, winning the N.L. West, still remains.
So, yes, it’s all about Giants-Dodgers right now, as it should be.
“He’s trying to find it”, San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy said. They have another to make after the Cubs knocked Matt Cain back a century. He’s allowed 11 in his 11 starts.
Cain allowed six runs in five innings – an indelible stain on a night when the Giants had to solve Jake Arrieta, a Cy Young contender who was 9-1 with a 1.26 ERA in his 12 previous starts. Heston can not be recalled for 10 days – that would be a day after Cain’s next scheduled start Sunday against the Giants – unless he replaces a pitcher who is hurt. But Bochy said Panik likely won’t take batting practice until Sunday at the earliest, and a best-case return date for Panik is probably the Giants’ series in Arizona at the end of the next road trip.
All the cautious optimism over Cain’s stuff is beyond the point of ringing hollow.
Cain lasted five innings, giving up six runs and eight hits.
First pitch at 7:15pm. He was the only Chicago player to record more than one hit or one run scored.
“They came through and I knew I was going to get an at-bat there and I made the most of it”, said Bryant, who became the fifth rookie in Cubs history to hit 20 homers in a season. 413 the second time around.
The Cubs were 1 for 8 in their first look against Cain. Arrieta retired the first 10 batters he faced before allowing a single to Matt Duffy, who had two hits. A Tommy La Stella single drove in Starlin Castro to make it 6-0 by the middle of the fourth inning.
San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey, right, tags out Chicago… “Pitches are getting away from him”. Instead, he got exit velocity. The Cubs improved to 5-0 against the Giants this year. Kris Bryant singled ahead of Montero’s shot in the fourth. The lone run scored as a result of his throwing error in the sixth.
Not long after, Bochy began removing his chess pieces from the board. Although the injury wasn’t believed to be disabling, it was significant enough to warrant putting outfielder Juan Perez at second base – a position he hadn’t played since 2009, when he was a 22-year-old at Class-A Augusta. From there, Andrew Susac cleared the bases with a double to center that cut Chicago’s lead to three. He followed up his four-inning, five-run start against the Cubs with a five-inning, six-run outing. He contributed a walk as part of the four-run eighth.
Giants: LHP Jeremy Affeldt was placed on the 15-day disabled list with a left knee subluxation he sustained while playing with his children on Monday.
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Bochy said that although Cain is still figuring out how to pitch with a “different” arm following his surgery, “We think he’s healthy”.
