Cubs overcome 9 walks to beat Diamondbacks 9-4
PHOENIX - Shortly after pulling off a pair of early-game escapes, Tom Gorzelanny half-jokingly told manager Lou Piniella he had just walked more in one game than Seattle's Cliff Lee had all season.
He was close. Gorzelanny actually matched Lee's total with 6 walks in 5 innings.
Not that it mattered. The way he was pulling off escapes and the rest of the Cubs' pitchers were making hitters miss, the walks could be tolerated.
Gorzelanny got out of one jam in the first inning, a bigger one in the third, and the Cubs struck out 12 in a 9-4 win over the still-struggling Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday.
"You get where you put yourself in bad situations and you have to find a way to get out of it," Gorzelanny said after his first win since May 19. "Today, I was just good enough to work my way out."
The Cubs gave Gorzelanny (3-5) some rare support early, roughing up Ian Kennedy (3-7) for 4 runs the first two innings.
Kosuke Fukudome led off the game with a homer, Starlin Castro and Geovany Soto drove in 2 runs each from the bottom of the order, and Alfonso Soriano capped it with his 800th career RBI with a solo shot in the eighth.
About those 9 walks? Unseemly, but the Cubs were able to work around it. For a team that has won just six times in 17 games, they'll take a 'W' any way they can get it.
"It was a good game for us," Cubs manager Lou Piniella said. "Offensively, we put some runs on the board, we hit the ball with some power, we hit with men on base. Good to see. As far as our pitching was concerned, outside of walking quite a few people, we did a nice job."
The Diamondbacks had been swinging and missing a lot this season, with 100 more strikeouts than the next closest team in the majors, including 28 combined in a pair of losses to the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend.
The Cubs were fourth in the majors with 634 strikeouts, so there figured to be a lot of flailing.
There was. Arizona whiffed at least a dozen times for the third straight game, including eight of the last nine outs to push its season total to 773.
What hurt the Diamondbacks more was the inability to capitalize on the walks. Arizona was 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position and got 1 run on two bases-loaded chances in the first three innings to lose its third straight under interim manager Kirk Gibson after a winning debut.
Gorzelanny did the best escape work, pitching out of walk-induced jams in the first and third innings.
"Today, I should have gone out there a little bit better," Gorzelanny said. "I was just trying to do too much. It was one of those days where I was kind of battling everything."
<p class="factboxheadblack">Cubs game tracker</p>
<p class="News">Cubs 9, Diamondbacks 4</p>
<p class="News"><b>Finally: </b>The Cubs came into Monday's game having dropped 11 consecutive series openers. Mercifully, that streak has ended.</p>
<p class="News"><b>Finally, Part II:</b> Kosuke Fukudome's homer was the Cubs' first to lead off a game this season.</p>
<p class="News"><b>Geo whiz:</b> Cubs catcher Geovany Soto had himself quite an afternoon, going 3-for-4 with 2 doubles, 2 RBI and 2 runs scored.</p>