Kris Bryant was already rolling along when Anthony Rizzo and Addison Russell got going. Once they did, the Chicago Cubs were on their way to another lopsided victory.
Bryant on Wednesday hit his 100th career homer, and Rizzo and Russell connected in an eight-run third inning as the Cubs pounded the Miami Marlins 13-4.
Rizzo also had a pair of doubles and finished with five RBIs as the Cubs outscored the Marlins 31-9 in a three-game sweep after dropping a season-high five in a row. It was quite a turnaround for a team that finished with three runs or less in 10 of 11 games prior to the series.
Photo: David Banks-USA TODAY
Manager Joe Maddon wants to see more consistency at the plate.
“We need to get going on the offensive side,” he said. “It’s nice to find the barrel. We need to find the barrel a little bit more.”
On the third anniversary of his first career home run, Bryant hit a drive about halfway up the bleachers in left field in the first inning. He followed his third homer in four games with an RBI double to deep center field in the third inning.
Chicago poured it on from there, scoring seven more runs in the inning against Taiwanese left-hander Chen Wei-yin to go up 9-0 while sending 11 batters to the plate.
“You couldn’t have scripted it any better,” Bryant said. “First home run three years ago and 100, I guess it made it even more special. It was pretty cool.”
Rizzo, Russell, Albert Almora and Willson Contreras each had three of Chicago’s 17 hits.
Jose Quintana (4-2) returned the favor after getting hit hard in a loss at Miami on April 1. The left-hander allowed one run and five hits in six innings.
Rizzo hit a three-run homer to right field in the third inning and added RBI doubles in the fourth and sixth innings.
Russell led off the third with a double and scored, then capped the inning with a two-run shot.
Miguel Rojas hit a two-run homer for Miami in the seventh inning, while Bryan Holaday added a solo drive in the ninth.
Miami starting pitcher Chen (1-2) got tagged for nine runs and seven hits over three innings in his third start back from a strained left elbow. His earned runs leaped from 4.82 to 10.22 ERA.
“He didn’t miss any bats,” manager Don Mattingly said. “It’s a good-hitting club and Wei-yin basically is a fly-ball pitcher. Not the best circumstances for him, but obviously I expect him to be better than that.”
Bryant, making his second start in right field, had two neat catches.
He made a sliding grab on Cameron Maybin in the fourth inning and reached near the wall to snag Starlin Carlin Castro’s foul in the sixth.
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
Real Madrid’s FIFA Club World Cup quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund had taken three crazy turns during nine minutes of second-half stoppage time when Marcel Sabitzer chested the ball and sent a right-footed volley toward Thibaut Courtois’ post. Courtois leapt to his right, extended the long arm on his 2m frame and just managed to get his gloved fingertips on the ball, knocking it down. Courtois hit the ground as the ball bounded up. He looked skyward, planted his right hand to regain his balance, grabbed the ball with both hands on the second bounce and fell onto it with his chest. Sabitzer turned
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
RSS