Masterful Hendricks schools Cards in complete-game shutout

It just so happened - it just so happened - that former Cubs pitcher Jon Lieber was a visitor to the clubhouse after the Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardinals 4-0 Friday at Wrigley Field.

Lieber's name was invoked a few times, as was that of another former Cub: Greg Maddux.

Conjuring up all those memories was current Cubs righty Kyle Hendricks, who authored a complete-game 4-hit shutout, throwing 81 pitches in the process.

Maddux was famous for needing fewer than 100 pitches to complete games. And the 81 pitches Hendricks needed were the fewest by a Cub in a shutout since Lieber needed 78 pitches to blank the Cincinnati Reds at Wrigley Field on May 24, 2001.

"Lucky I got one," the self-effacing Hendricks said. "Every time I go out there I'm trying to get early contact and get early outs. When it happens to go this way, you can say, 'Look, I did it.' A little lucky, too. There were some hard-hit balls."

More important for the Cubs (17-12), they won their fifth in a row and pulled within 1½ games of the Cardinals (20-12) in the ultracompetitive National League Central.

For Hendricks, Friday's gem came on the heels of a 5-inning, 7-run performance at Arizona. He improved to 2-4 and lowered his ERA from 5.33 to 3.93.

"I was trying to keep my focus, just make a good pitch," he said. "I've been kind of bad, especially the last one, I did a terrible job with the mental approach. I just tried to stay in my approach, stay on pitch to pitch."

Hendricks' pitch counts went like this: 10 in the first inning followed by 6, 8, 15, 9, 7, 7, 9 and 10 for each inning the rest of the game.

He and catcher Willson Contreras recognized early that the Cardinals came out swinging, so they let them hit the ball. Hendricks got 5 outs on the first pitch of at-bats and 9 outs on the second pitch of at-bats. He wound up striking out only three but walking none in a game that took 2 hours, 28 minutes to play. The Cubs committed no errors and got several good defensive plays.

"I think what you saw was an aggressive approach," said Cubs manager Joe Maddon. "He attacked the zone, made them put the ball in play. There were no walks. There were better counts. And that's who he is. When he gets in those good counts, he can really go to work on the edges. That's when he's really good."

First baseman Anthony Rizzo gave Hendricks all the offense he needed with a 3-run homer in the third. Daniel Descalso and Kris Bryant walked ahead of Rizzo, who took an 0-1 pitch from Jack Flaherty and kept it fair as it traveled over the right-field wall for Rizzo's eighth homer of the season.

Like everybody else, Rizzo marveled at Hendricks.

"Just amazing, too, coming off his last outing, Rizzo said. "He probably wasn't too happy. Eighty-one pitches, was it? Yeah, it's fun to watch. It's definitely fun to watch and play behind."