Cubs hang tough, get win in 11th
The victory was supposed to be an easy one for the Cubs on Saturday.
They ended up making it difficult, but in doing so they may have gained something valuable for down the road.
Staked to a 6-2 lead in the ninth inning, relievers Phil Coke and Hector Rondon combined to give up 6 hits and 4 runs, and the San Diego Padres suddenly had tied the game at 6-6.
It took until the bottom of the 11th for Starlin Castro - who had a good game on both sides of the ball - to single past a five-man infield against tough closer Craig Kimbrel to score Anthony Rizzo with the winning run, enabling the Cubs to escape with a 7-6 victory.
"Whenever you win late and you know you can win late, that matters a lot," said manager Joe Maddon, whose team is 6-4. "When teams don't quit and do play nine innings hard every night, that matters."
Castro wound up 3-for-6, giving him a team-leading 13 hits for the season. The shortstop also made more than one nice play in the field. He agreed with his manager's take on sticking with games until the end.
"It's really good," he said. "Last year we would lose a lot of games like that. We played a lot of extra-inning games, and we would lose them. We continue to fight and play nine innings. If we play more than nine innings, we keep fighting and try to win the game."
This game, played in 36-degree windchill conditions, was full of little and big gems:
• Rookie third baseman Kris Bryant picked up his first major-league hit, a broken-bat looping single to score a run in the fifth inning. He beat out an infield hit to shortstop in the 11th. More impressive, however, Bryant battled for 3 walks.
"Right on," Maddon said. "Everybody is looking for hits all the time. You always look for good at-bats and being a good decision-maker. He was that today."
• Slugging first baseman Anthony Rizzo single twice, walked once, scored the game-winner and stole two bases. His first-inning single came on the 11th pitch he saw from Padres starting pitcher Tyson Ross.
• Catcher Miguel Montero hit home runs in the sixth and seventh innings, his first 2 as a member of the Cubs.
"I got lucky," he said.
• Left-handed reliever Zac Rosscup was an unsung hero as he held the Padres scoreless in the 10th and 11th innings to restore some equilibrium to the bullpen and give the offense a chance to rescue the day.
• Lost in the late-inning collapse and comeback was the work of starting pitcher Kyle Hendricks, who gave up a 2-run homer to Matt Kemp in the first inning and then retired 14 in a row, lasting 6 innings and giving up 3 hits.
"Honestly, I felt good from the start," Hendricks said. "It was just one of those days. Everything was kind of working in the pen, too. The pitch to Kemp, 0-2, just trying to elevate. Right out of my hand I knew it was one of those pitches you miss. And to that guy, you can't miss."
Maddon said his normal procedure in games like this is to go "up and down the dugout, just yelling crazy stuff." He did not divulge specifics, but his message was clear after the ninth-inning bullpen woes.
"The biggest thing you've got to get across at that point is that it's over with, we got out of it, now let's move forward, let's win this thing, and that could even be a bigger morale booster," he said. "And we did it."