First, Brad Brach escaped a tough situation, then Brandon Kintzler, Randy Rosario and Pedro Strop finished the job.
Chicago’s beleaguered bullpen on Monday stepped up after Jon Lester departed with hamstring tightness, leading the Cubs over the Pittsburgh Pirates 10-0 in their home opener.
“That will build their confidence. They need that,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “The group needs that. They were all really good.”
Photo: AFP
Chicago’s bullpen had an 8.37 ERA on an opening 2-7 trip, amplifying concerns about pitching depth, with relievers Brandon Morrow, Xavier Cedeno and Tony Barnette sidelined by injuries, but the bullpen on Sunday threw four scoreless innings in Milwaukee and the form carried over into the matchup with the Pirates.
Brach (1-0) came in after Lester was removed with two on and no outs in the third inning.
He got Starling Marte to bounce into a double play, then struck out Francisco Cervelli.
Brach worked the fourth, before Kintzler and Rosario each pitched two innings.
Strop closed it out on a picturesque day at Wrigley Field.
“It’s just one of those things where kind of the good pitching can be contagious, but at the same time the bad pitching can be contagious,” Brach said. “I think now we’re ready to get on a little bit of a roll and hopefully seven innings can go a long way to the next game.”
Lester got hurt when he scored from second on Ben Zobrist’s two-run single in Chicago’s six-run second inning.
The veteran left-hander was scheduled to undergo an MRI scan yesterday.
“I didn’t feel a pop, or any tingling or any numbness, or anything like that,” Lester said. “Just kind of felt like something was in there grabbing me a little bit. So I guess that’s the positive look at it.”
Pittsburgh had won four in a row, but the Pirates made four errors, including three by shortstop Kevin Newman in the second inning.
“We need to play better defense,” Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said. “There were a couple of different sequences there, maybe, with execution of pitches didn’t help, and defensively we had outs to put away and we didn’t do it, and the inning got away from us.”
Newman’s first error allowed Daniel Descalso to reach after Jameson Taillon (0-2) retired the first two batters.
He committed two more errors on a Kyle Schwarber grounder and Anthony Rizzo scampered home to give the Cubs a 6-0 lead.
In between the fielding trouble for Newman, Lester, Zobrist, Rizzo and Javier Baez each came up with big hits.
Rizzo’s run-scoring single went off Taillon’s head, but he stayed in the game.
“I’m fine. I’m unlucky I got hit and lucky I seem to be OK coming out of it,” said Taillon, who was charged with six unearned runs and four hits in two innings.
Newman said it was a humbling experience.
“A couple of days ago was the greatest day I’ve ever had on the field. Today was quite the opposite,” Newman said.
Elsewhere on Monday, the Orioles thrashed the Athletics 12-4, the Astros edged the Yankees 4-3, the Angels beat the Brewers 5-2, the Phillies defeated the Nationals 4-3 and the Mariners routed the Royals 13-5.
The Cardinals edged the Dodgers 4-3, the Padres defeated the Giants 6-5, the Braves beat the Rockies 8-6 and the Rays routed the White Sox 5-1.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier