Davis, Baez homers rescue Darvish as Chicago Cubs win sixth straight
Saturday was just another chapter in the long running saga between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals.
It's a story that only gets better with time, and a 6-5 Cubs winner at Wrigley Field featured more strangely delicious plot twists.
Backup catcher Taylor Davis made his first major-league home run a big one, hitting a grand slam in the fourth inning, tying the game at 5-5 and helping the Cubs dig out of a hole created by starting pitcher Yu Darvish.
The game-winner came in the eighth, when Javier Baez crushed an opposite-field homer to break the tie. Right before that, Baez lofted a flyball down the right-field line. The Cardinals converged, and the ball was called foul. The Cubs challenged the call, only to have their appeal denied - luckily for them.
"Thank God for instant replay," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. "Thank God that we did not get what we wanted right there, unintended foul ball. If that had been called fair, it would have been much more difficult to score him, probably, but we get another shot and the ball goes in the bleachers."
Things have been going the Cubs' way lately. The victory was their sixth in a row, and it improved their record to 18-12, putting them one-half game behind the first-place Cardinals (20-13) in the National League Central.
There was real concern early for the Cubs. Darvish could not put together back-to-back quality starts as he lasted 4-plus innings, giving up 6 hits and 5 runs while walking five and striking out four.
Right after Davis hit his grand slam, Darvish took the mound and walked the first two St. Louis batters of the fifth on 9 pitches.
Darvish threw 81 pitches, same as Kyle Hendricks in Friday's complete-game shutout. Hendricks threw 63 strikes, while Darvish threw only 40 strikes.
The Cardinals scored single runs in both the second and third innings to erase a 1-0 Cubs lead and then put across 3 in the fourth.
"My stuff was good, but I used too much sinker," said Darvish, whose ERA went from 5.02 to 5.79. "The result was not good, but I can fix it for next time. We had a good game plan. I felt really good about my sinker today, so that's why I used too much sinker today. That's not my strength."
Davis, a nondrafted free agent who has been in the Cubs' organization since 2011, is more known for his defense, but his memory of this game will be for his grand slam.
The Cardinals walked Kyle Schwarber to get to Davis to load the bases with one out in the fourth. Davis hit the first pitch from Michael Wacha into the bleachers and then floated around the bases.
"It was really exciting, a really fun experience," said Davis, who appeared in 13 games total for the Cubs before this season. He came up April 12 after Victor Caratini went on the injured list.
"It's unbelievable. It's a really, really fun feeling hearing Wrigley Field react like that."
Six Cubs relievers pitched scoreless ball, with Kyle Ryan getting the final two outs in the fifth, Brandon Kintzler (1-0) earning the win and Pedro Strop notching his fourth save.
As for Baez, the homer was his 11th of the season.
"The first 10 games of the season, it was everybody talking about us," he said of the team's 2-7 start. "Now, where is everybody? We've still got a long season to go. We're still going to play hard. We've got to make adjustments on the field after the game starts.
"But, like I said, you don't know where baseball is going until the call is made. So we're just going to play hard and keep staying together."