A win that's 'good for the psyche': Cubs batter Pirates, 21-0
You've heard of "fun at the old ballpark?"
Well, the Cubs had plenty of it during a historic 21-0 beat down of the Pittsburgh Pirates during a warm, sun-kissed afternoon at Wrigley Field on Saturday.
"I don't want to ... make excuses (but) we've had some (yucky) weather to play in the last few days," said manager David Ross. "Today was a beautiful day. Beautiful crowd."
And plenty of beautiful results - at the plate, on the mound and in the field.
Among the many highlights:
• This was the Cubs' largest shutout victory in the modern era, bettering 19-0 wins over San Diego in 1969 and the New York Giants in 1906.
• This was the Cubs' highest run total since a 26-7 victory at Colorado on August 18, 1995.
• This was the first time the Cubs scored 21 runs at Wrigley since June 3, 1987.
• This was the Cubs' largest margin of victory since a 24-2 win over Boston on July 3, 1945.
• Seiya Suzuki, Willson Contreras, Ian Happ, Alfonso Rivas and Nico Hoerner all had 3-hit days, the first time the Cubs have had five players do that since 2005.
• The Cubs' batting average on the day was .479 (23-for-48).
"It's definitely enjoyable," said Ross, whose team snapped a four-game losing streak and improved to 7-8. "It's (also) good for the psyche. ... Really good day for a lot of guys."
Suzuki raised his average to .372, Contreras to .261, Happ to .333 and Hoerner to .327. Hoerner (7-for-9 last two contests) was hitting .225 two days ago.
The Cubs went up 1-0 after one inning, then sent 12 men to the plate in an 8-run second. Suzuki's RBI single to right on an 0-2 pitch was a big key to the explosion, but so were a pair of errors by shortstop Kevin Newman. Those bobbles allowed Rivas to come up with two outs and blast a 3-run homer into the right-field bleachers to close out the scoring in the second.
The Cubs added 2 runs in the fourth, 5 in the fifth (getting 4 doubles in the frame), 1 in the seventh and 4 in the eighth as Pittsburgh sent third baseman Diego Castillo to the mound for mop-up duty.
Incredibly, the Cubs didn't take advantage of the wind blowing out at 19 MPH very often as 18 of their hits were singles.
Kyle Hendricks needed just 76 pitches to throw 7 innings of 2-hit ball. The veteran right hander was happy with how he established his fastball and probably could have finished under different circumstances.
In the big picture, the Cubs are happy their bats broke out after scoring just 16 runs in the previous five games.
"It's been a weird start the whole time at home. It's been tough," Hendricks said. "Today really felt like a classic Wrigley day. The crowd was amazing and it really fed into our guys.
"You saw it from the start how locked in everybody was. It was just a great day to be out there. It definitely started with the crowd - packed house and a lot of energy. That's what we love."