Darvish struggles, but homers by Bryant, Rizzo power Cubs past Marlins

Before this season started, it appeared that two big keys for the Chicago Cubs would be comeback seasons by Kris Bryant and Yu Darvish.

After a slow start, Bryant is looking like the Bryant of his hugely productive seasons.

Darvish is looking like, well, the disappointment he's been since he got here.

Bryant crushed his seventh home run of the season Thursday in the first inning and was on base when Anthony Rizzo hit his 10th as the Cubs overcame another short start by Darvish to beat the Miami Marlins 4-1 at Wrigley Field.

The Cubs (22-13) took three of four in the series an increased their lead in the National League Central by 1 game over the idle Milwaukee Brewers (23-16), who come to town for a weekend series.

Bryant is hot. He has homered in four of his last five games and has reached base in 19 straight. That has him feeling a lot better about himself.

"Yeah, when things are going good, you're feeling good," he said. "When things are bad, you think you stink. This game's hard enough. We always beat ourselves up when we're not playing the way we want to play."

Bryant's homer was a line shot over the wall against Trevor Richards. He walked and rode home on Rizzo's blast to center field in the fifth. It was Rizzo's 201st career homer and his 200th as a Cub.

That should have been enough to get Darvish a victory, but he couldn't get past 4 innings as he threw 97 pitches while walking six and striking out seven. He gave up the lone Miami run.

Manager Joe Maddon said before the last two of Darvish's starts (both 4 innings) that he wanted Darvish to be more "visceral" or "primal" and pitch instead of think. "Until last Saturday, I was thinking too much," said Darvish, who has an ERA of 5.40 and just 1 quality start among his 8. "But today I was focusing more on attacking the hitter. Command was off, that was it.

"I'm a thinker in my almost-15-year career, but absolutely it's too much. I want to be better. It's my challenge, but I think that's good for me."

Darvish has a sympathetic ear in Bryant.

"It's easier said than done, though," Bryant said of not overthinking. "I hear it from everybody: 'Just go out there and have fun.' Well, it's hard to do that. There's 30 cameras in your face. There's a lot of fans out there and you want to impress everybody. That's the sense I get from him, he really wants to impress everybody and please everybody. Most of us are that way, and when things don't go your way, you feel terrible. I've been in that situation.

"If he's just throwing the ball over the plate, his stuff is so good that it's hard to hit. He's going to figure it out. I know he will. He's been doing it for so long in Japan and over here. He's going to be a big part of our success this year."

Darvish was bailed out by versatile swing man Mike Montgomery, who came on in the fifth and worked the rest of the way in his first appearance off the injured list. Montgomery (1-0) threw 71 pitches in 5 innings and saved the rest of the bullpen for this weekend.

"That was good," he said. "I hadn't pitched in the big leagues in over a month. Get out there and have some of those jitters going a little bit, but I was able to kind of calm myself down and try to go out there and get outs. They kept telling me I'm going back out, so it was just a mindset of keep making pitches."