Cubs find their bats in 9-4 rout of Diamondbacks
The Chicago Cubs gave starter Tom Gorzelanny some strong run support and defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks 9-4 in Phoenix on Monday to give their team a victory in the opening game of a three-game road series.
Gorzelanny rises to 3-5 on the season, although his performance did leave a lot to be desired. Over the course of his five innings pitched, he seemed to struggle with his control and walked six batters. He was able to escape serious damage though, limiting his opponents to just three runs. But with over 100 pitches thrown, he was removed early from the game, allowing the Cubs’ bullpen to step up and let in just one run over the next four innings.
“You get where you put yourself in bad situations and you have to find a way to get out of it,” Gorzelanny said after the game. “Today, I was just good enough to work my way out.” The win is his first since May.
His counterpart, Ian Kennedy, had a much less successful outing. Kennedy dropped to 3-7 on the year and was lit up for seven runs over the course of just under six innings. He allowed nine hits, but conversely, zero walks, with Kosuke Fukodome starting things off with a solo shot in the first inning. Three runs followed in the second as Starlin Castro tripled, and Alfonso Soriano hit a milestone late in the game with a solo home run to get to 800 career RBIs.
Struggling Diamondbacks can’t convert
For the Diamondbacks, the loss will be all the more disappointing in that they were given plenty of opportunities to score runs early. They were a paltry one for nine with runners in scoring position, and had a total of nine batters walked throughout the game.
Their issues with strikeouts continued, having had 12 or more batters struck out for the past three games. Their bats utterly fell apart at the end of the game as well, with eight batters striking out in the last three innings in front of a disappointed home town crowd.
They are now 1-3 since having fired their manager A.J Hinch. Interim manager Kirk Gibson spoke of the disappointment after losing their third straight game after the team won in his début as manager.
“For me, the most frustrating part is I want the guys to feel the success for the work they have put in, but the game just doesn’t do that sometimes,” Gibson said. “That is kind of the way things have been going around here now, but we are identifying that area that we need to make an adjustment.”
The Diamondbacks’ biggest chance came in the third innings when they loaded the bases with zero outs, but only managed to convert on a single run.
Cubs get ray of life
It wasn’t just the Diamondbacks coming into this game on a slump though. The Cubs had looked rocky the past while, including getting bombarded with seven home runs by the Cincinnati Reds. After having been at around .500 for the beginning of the year, they’ve plummeted long out of the play-off race by having gone 6-11 in the past 17 games, putting them behind Cincinnati, St-Louis and Milwaukee in the NL Central standings.
But Monday’s game, according to manager Lou Pinella was an encouraging sign.
“It was a good game for us,” Piniella said. “Offensively, we put some runs on the board, we hit the ball with some power, we hit with men on base. Good to see. As far as our pitching was concerned, outside of walking quite a few people, we did a nice job.”
Tags: