Runless run continues at Wrigley
The Cubs haven't been home in awhile, so it might be easy to forget how long it's been since they scored a run at Wrigley Field.
“Three games,” said manager Dale Sveum after Monday night's 2-0 loss to the Cincinnati Reds.
The Cubs were shut out for the third straight home game. The Dodgers blanked them Aug. 3 and 4. The last Cubs run at Wrigley came in the fourth inning of the Aug. 2 game against L.A. The Cubs had not been blanked three straight games at Wrigley since Aug. 20-21, 1924, when the Boston kept them scoreless in a doubleheader and Brooklyn shut them out the next day.
On a pleasant Monday night, they got a good pitching performance from lefty Travis Wood, but they ran into Reds righty Mat Latos, who was a bit better as he improved to 12-3 with a 3.04 ERA.
“It's funny,” Sveum said. “We're scoring in bigger parks and stuff on the road. We can't seem to muster up anything at home. We've got no slugging percentage at home right now.”
Sveum added that he could see bad things on the way early.
“I think I told Jamie in the first inning this could be a long night,” Sveum said, referring to bench coach Jamie Quirk. “That was the stuff he (Latos) had a couple of years ago in the first half of the season, when he was up to 97 (mph) and throwing 88-90-mile-an-hour sliders that had that much depth. You're not going to put too much together.”
Wood has been the Cubs' hard-luck starter. He turned in his 20th quality start, working 8 innings and giving up 4 hits and 2 runs. He fell to 7-9 with a 3.00 ERA.
The Reds scored both runs in the seventh. Todd Frazier led off with a walk. One out later, Brandon Phillips hit his 15th homer
“Hat's off to him,” Wood said of Latos. “He was outstanding tonight. I guess he just outpitched me tonight. He kept us off the board. I made a mistake to Phillips, and he hit it out of the park, and that was all he needed.”
The Cubs had 2 hits in each of the fifth and sixth innings, but could not score. In the sixth, Junior Lake singled with one out. Anthony Rizzo followed with a sharp single to center. On the play, Lake was thrown out at third base on a perfect throw from Shin-Soo Choo.
“That was all right,” Sveum said. “We needed a guy at third with less than two outs, and Choo threw the most perfect throw you could throw. You can't control a ball any better than that. If it's offline, if it's a little left or a little right, he's safe. So I got not problem with that aggressiveness.”
The Cubs came into the game ranked second in walks in the National League in walks since the all-star break after struggling with plate approaches in the first half. But against Latos, they weren't going to walk. He didn't walk a batter and struck out nine.
“He was pounding the strike zone,” said second baseman Darwin Barney, who had 1 of the Cubs' 6 hits. “I think he was down with his slider early and got some swings. It was 35 pitches through 3 (innings), which is usually not a good number offensively for us. We've been doing a better job, but when he's attacking the strike zone, you kind of want to try and get him early.”