Late-inning surge clears way to Cubs' victory
Say all you want about the Cubs operating in a fog.
They did pretty well Friday with a marine layer rolling in off Lake Michigan for the early part of their 11-4 victory over the San Francisco Giants, no strangers themselves to fog sweeping in off the bay.
For the second time in three days, the Cubs won by an 11-4 score.
Even though the Cubs scored 8 runs in the seventh and eighth innings, let's not lose in the haze another nice pitching performance by Ryan Dempster, who turned in his third straight quality start and got the victory to improve to 2-4 and lower his ERA from 7.20 to 6.71.
This was still a tight ballgame when Dempster exited after throwing 114 pitches over 6 innings. The Cubs led only 3-1 at the time.
“Better late than never,” said manager Mike Quade, whose team improved to 17-20. “Imminent rain, wind blowing in, it had 2-1, 3-2 written all over it, didn't it? Sometimes you never know. It's a funny game.”
This was an interesting one because the Cubs played some small-ball in the early going before going on their late spree. They had runners on first and third in the second inning when No. 8 hitter Koyie Hill came up with one out. The switch-hitting Hill laid down a successful safety squeeze bunt, scoring Alfonso Soriano, who had already exhibited some aggressive baserunning by scampering to third on Reed Johnson's looping single to right.
Hill explained the method to the seeming madness.
“They gave me the option there,” he said. “I'm thinking I've had, what, 1 right-handed at-bat to that point. The wind's blowing everybody down coming in. I thought, ‘Shoot, I know I'm going to get a pitch I can probably handle here, but let's go ahead see if we can't make something happen,' and it worked out.
“Sometimes you have to be creative and do whatever you need to do to get the run. ‘Q' gave me the option there, and we took advantage of it.”
After Dempster gladly accepted a walk from Madison Bumgarner, Nos. 1 and 2 hitters Starlin Castro and Darwin Barney provided a little foreshadowing of things to come by hitting RBI singles.
Both of those players ran all over the bases in the seventh, when the Cubs scored 5 runs, and in the eighth, when they scored 3. Don't look now, but Castro is 10-for-17 with 5 runs and 6 RBI in his last four games after suffering through a slump.
“They continue to do a pretty darn good job setting the table,” Quade said of Castro and Barney.
The man who help bust the game open late was Reed Johnson, who got a rare start in right field because the Giants started a lefty. Johnson hit a 3-run triple in the seventh. In the eighth, he added an RBI single.
And just to show he could operate in a fog, he ran down Mike Fontenot's flyball to the wall in the second inning, battling not only the fog, but the wind and the curve in the wall.
“The way the wind was blowing, it was blowing directly across and towards the well,” he said. “It started off in the shallow part right before it gets deep in that area where it would have been a home run. The wind just pushed the ball to the deeper part, so we were fortunate.
“Somebody said something like ‘the fog ball.' That was the least of my worries at that point.”
Dempster appreciated the effort.
“He looked like Captain Morgan,” Dempster said. “You see him standing there right at the end of the catch, he's got his knee up. He's a professional.”
Dempster wasn't so bad, either, walking one and striking out 11 and looking like the No. 1 starter again.
“I think probably (I was) a lot more aggressive,” he said. “For some reason, it felt like before, I was trying not to lose the game rather than trying to win it. I don't know the reason why. I really don't care what the reason is. I went out there today and attacked the strike zone and attacked the guys.”