Veteran Cubs looking just as good as youngsters
BOSTON - The Chicago Cubs' young players shined in Saturday's 7-4 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, and the veterans didn't fare poorly, either.
Catcher Miguel Montero hit his second homer of the season, and he worked to settle down starting pitcher John Lackey.
The Cubs started Jon Jay in left field and later moved Ben Zobrist from second base to left. Both Jay and Zobrist handled the 37-foot-high Green Monster in left like old hands at it.
Jay played a carom correctly in the sixth inning. Dustin Pedroia led off by hitting the ball off the wall. Jay fielded it and threw out Pedroia as he tried for a double.
Zobrist moved to left in the eighth. The leadoff hitter, Mookie Betts, hit the Monster, but Zobrist played the bounce and held Betts to a single instead of a double. After a forceout, reliever Hector Rondon got Mitch Moreland to ground into a 3-6-3 double play.
Zobrist gave the Cubs an insurance run with a solo homer in the ninth, and he tagged out Pedroia on Jay's play.
"That's a big play by Zo, the last one especially," said manager Joe Maddon. "Zo makes a great tag on the back end of one from Jon and then Zo makes the front end and keeps (Betts' ball) to a single, which pretty much leads to the double play. Stuff like that goes uncharted sometimes."
As for Montero, he homered off knuckleballer Steven Wright and worked Lackey through possible danger with home-plate umpire Bill Welke, who called some borderline pitches balls early in the game.
"I just told the umpire I'll take care of it," Montero said. "The last thing I wanted to do was get a little retaliation. I don't want to do that. Just keep throwing it there because he (Welke) is going to call it (a strike) eventually. And he did."
A break for Baez:
Javier Baez did not start, but he did get into the game as a defensive replacement in the eighth inning. He is batting .203 with 21 strikeouts in 59 at-bats.
"The biggest thing for me with him is you expect to get him back to where he had been offensively with a little bit more control of his strike zone," Joe Maddon said. "And he will. He'll definitely get back to that. But in the meantime, we have all these other options that you just don't have to run somebody into the ground. It's worked out really well, I think, the way it is.
"He had a great camp, a really good camp. I think he might be the proverbial trying a little too hard right now. He's in the moment now here he's taking the pitch he should be swinging at and swinging at the pitch he should not. Happens."