Soler, activated off the disabled list before the game after being out since June 6 with a hamstring injury, celebrating his return to the majors with his home run in the first inning. He allowed four runs and nine hits in six innings. Jon Lester took a one-hitter into the sixth inning Friday.
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Cubs ace Arrieta tossed eight scoreless innings with four strikeouts to beat the Athletics and improve to 13-5 for the season. Bryant’s home run was his 27th this season, one more than the two-time All-Star had in 2015 when he was the NL’s rookie of the year.
Cubs: Maddon said the plan is to ease Soler back in and get him some defensive work in the outfield before the team faces another NL team on August 11. “Their pitcher escaped a lot of moments but he did have really good stuff”, Maddon said.
Hendricks, the least-heralded, may be pitching the best. Hendricks, who is facing Oakland for the first time, has dominated at home but is a pedestrian 2-6 with a 3.75 ERA in nine starts on the road.
When a right handed batter gets ahead in the count, the slider will practically disappear, and when a lefty gets ahead, he’ll avoid his change up and try to get them out with his fastball and slider.
In the ninth, with many in the crowd at Coors Field standing, Suzuki hit a comebacker to Scott Oberg.
Semien’s 23rd home run of the season in the eighth inning prevented Oakland from being shut out for a second straight game but not much else went right in a 3-1 loss to Chicago on Sunday.
“We were swinging the bats well coming into the series”, Melvin said.
It didn’t get any easier for the A’s after Hendricks exited. Pedro Strop came on to strike Jake Smolinski out on three straight sliders and retire Ryon Healy on a pop-up. Then, to the delight of the many vocal Cubs fans in attendance, the recently acquired left-hander Aroldis Chapman entered for the ninth, making his first appearance of the series.
RANGERS 3, ASTROS 2: Jonathan Lucroy hit two homers, Carlos Beltran had a tiebreaking single and three hits and the Texas Rangers beat the Houston Astros.
Zobrist and Addison Russell had two hits each for the Cubs. Not that it always works, but the policy of regular days off in the first half and a frequent ban on batting practice into the summer months is supposed to create fresher legs and fresher minds at a point in the season that often feels like quicksand to everyday players.
Stanton’s 23rd homer was the longest in the major leagues this season and the longest in Coors Field history.
RHP Joe Nathan was designated for assignment Friday, opening a spot on the Cubs’ 25-man roster for OF Jorge Soler, who was activated from the disabled list. To make matters worse, neither he nor manager Bob Melvin can pinpoint anything specific he’s doing wrong. The Cubs have a better than 55% chance of winning based on 10,000 game simulations generated one play at a time by the AccuScore Simulation Supercomputer. “And that’s a pretty good lineup that, other than two pitches, he did a great job against”.
Dillon Overton felt most of his pitches went where he wanted. The pitch to Soler, he said, was meant to be in with the same result.
“I think overall my pitches were working good, they just hit everything I threw”, Overton said.
“I enjoyed pitching here”.
Saturday’s game was the second straight in which the A’s (48-62) struggled offensively.
Meanwhile, Corey Kluber struck out eight batters and gave up just two runs to help the Indians topple the Yankees. Orlando Arcia scored four times in Milwaukee’s highest-scoring game of the season.
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The Cubs, looking to extend their winning streak to seven games, hold a 2-0 lead in the seventh inning Sunday at the O.co Coliseum. “We’d like to beat him today, but he had an impact on quite a few guys while he was here”.
