Cubs bullpen rises to challenge; Morel homers again
Christopher Morel was born the year after the great home run battle of 1998, so he admits not knowing much about fellow Dominican Republic native Sammy Sosa.
But Morel matched one of Sosa's feats Tuesday, hitting a home run for the fifth straight game as the Cubs knocked off the New York Mets 7-2 at Wrigley Field.
Morel went deep in the seventh inning, giving him 9 home runs in just 12 games with the Cubs. He's only the fourth major-leaguer since 1900 to accomplish that.
After the game, he talked about still trying to cut down on his strikeouts.
"We can be better," Morel said. "Everybody only sees the homers. I'm super happy with this, but I can be better at the plate for my team."
Seiya Suzuki and Matt Mervis also hit homers, and the Cubs perked up in clutch situations by starting the game 4-for-7 with runners in scoring position. Mervis and Dansby Swanson had two-out RBI singles in the fourth to stretch the lead to 6-1.
Before the contest, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer was asked if he had any regrets about sending Morel to Triple A Iowa at the start of the season. Morel hit 11 homers in 29 games for the I-Cubs, then cranked up the power pace when promoted.
"Chris, he was really good last year when he came up in the beginning," Hoyer said. "When you look at his second half, he had about a 35% strikeout rate, had a .260 on-base or something like that. We weren't sure there were going to be every day at-bats here at the time. Let's really let him go out and get established and he did that and he took off.
"So certainly you can look at it and say, 'Boy, I wish we had those home runs from Iowa here.' Or you can say, 'The reason he hit the home runs here is because he got on a roll in Iowa, getting confident and playing every day.'"
The Cubs' boss brushed off the idea Morel won't get as much playing time when Cody Bellinger returns from the injured list.
"We're not going to take a guy who's hitting a homer every 6 at-bats out of the lineup," he said.
Hoyer also took blame for the Cubs' shaky bullpen, which has gotten worse as the season has gone along. The Cubs started the season with a couple of veteran relievers, but no set closer. It worked well for a few weeks, but that success did not last.
"If I'm being candid, I feel like I put Rossy (manager David Ross) in a tough spot, to a certain extent," Hoyer said. "It hasn't lined up the way we expected it to. We'll get there. I think we have a lot of power arms in the minors and in the organization and we're going to get there."
The bullpen was put to the test in this game. Starter Drew Smyly was solid for five innings, then started the sixth by loading the bases with nobody out, with MLB home run leader Pete Alonso stepping to the plate. Jeremiah Estrada entered the game and got out of the inning with just one run scored. He got Alonso to ground into a fielder's choice, then Daniel Vogelbach flew out to center and Starling Marte grounded to short.
After the game, Estrada was asked if his heart beats any faster when facing someone like Alonso, who homered in his previous at-bat, in such an important situation.
"Not really," Estrada said. "At the end of the day, no matter what it is, it's the same game. You've got some guys that are bigger names and it's cool to face Pete Alonso. But at the end of the day, I don't care who it is, it's me and (catcher) Yan (Gomes) out there.
Julian Merryweather, Mark Leiter Jr. and Michael Fulmer also contributed to posting 4 shutout innings for the bullpen.
Twitter: @McGrawDHSports