Hamels sharp as Cubs beat Cardinals

If there's anything tried-and-true in baseball, it's that good starting pitching gives a team a chance every game.

Cole Hamels, a tried-and-true veteran in his own right, proved that again Friday during a 3-1 victory for the Chicago Cubs over the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field.

Hamels tossed 8 shutout innings, walking one and striking out 10 as he improved to 5-2 with a 3.24 ERA.

"Did you notice the counts?" asked Cubs manager Joe Maddon. "He was in 1-2 counts. The first three or four innings, it seemed like everything was 1-2. Great command of his changeup. Fastball was clocking. I saw more 92s (mph) and 93s consistently today. Hotter fastball. Total command of his changeup. And much better counts. So when you get to that point, hitters can't relax and sit on things."

Hamels had 1-2 counts on nine batters through the first four innings He retired four others on the second pitch of at-bats and one on a first pitch.

"It's huge," Hamels said. "All pitchers strive for that. It's the part of the game where you're staying in control. You're keeping hitters off-balance, and you're putting them in a situation where they're going to have to commit to pitches that might be out of the zone and not be in their sort of a slug zone."

Javier Baez gave Hamels a 2-0 lead against Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas in the first with a 2-run homer, an opposite-field drive to right. Baez drove in Anthony Rizzo, who led off with a walk. Rizzo was batting leadoff in place of Kyle Schwarber, who got the day off.

Mikolas left the game after four innnings. He was hit by a line drive from David Bote to end the fourth and suffered a bruised right forearm.

Back-to-back doubles by Jason Heyward and Victor Caratini gave the Cubs a 3-0 lead in the fourth. Hamels wound up throwing 99 pitches. Pedro Strop pitched the ninth inning and gave up a one-out homer to Antioch High School graduate Paul DeJong before nailing down his sixth save.

When in doubt, run it out:

Anthony Rizzo was involved in an odd play in the fifth inning. Rizzo singled with two outs. Kris Bryant then hit the ball down the left-field line. The ball struck a security person in foul territory. Rizzo slowed, thinking it was a dead ball.

Third-base umpire Brian Gorman gave the "safe" sign, meaning the ball was still alive. Rizzo then ran home, but he was tagged out at the plate.

"I messed up there," Rizzo said. "You're supposed to run the whole time. It's easier to run all the way and get called back than kind of slow down like I did and assume. Thankfully it didn't affect the game, and we got the win."

Joe Maddon argued briefly.

"It was touched inadvertently, not intentionally, by the ball person out there, whereas if they do it intentionally, then it's automatically two bases," Maddon said. "I guess you could actually determine that if you're really watching it. But my question is it's impeded both ways. So why would you differentiate between something that's been impeded one way or another?

"I guess you could train your ball people to grab the ball to prevent triples or runner-on-first and make sure he doesn't score. That could be part of the training regimen in spring training."