The Cubs broke out their big bats in time to salvage the series - and road trip - and welcomed back Alfonso Soriano from the DL with a 10-6 win against the Diamondbacks Wednesday night. The win was highlighted by a Reed Johnson grand slam in the 8th inning that ultimately provided the margin of victory.
What can you say? A team in need of a spark was finally able to find one against a soft-tossing Doug Davis. They do seem to love mashing on left-handed pitchers, really a complete reversal from last year. The Cubs wasted no time jumping on him, with Derrek Lee hitting a solo home run to give the Cubs an early lead. There was a time in the earlier innings though where you thought that this might be it. At one point Doug proceeded to retire six in a row, and started taking advantage of some liberal calls on the outside corner to expand the strike zone. The Cubs finally got wise, and stopped taking the bait, forcing him to come inside with what's a very sub-par fastball. You can pretty much guess what happened after that. Down 2-1 after a Tony Clark homer, the Cubs grabbed three in the 5th inning, keyed by of all things a Ted Lilly seeing-eye single that scored Mark DeRosa. Ugliest swings I've ever seen from a hitter, to be sure, but he's a .205 hitter for the year. And he even stole a base, taking third pretty easily actually.
The Diamondbacks came back with a run in the bottom of the inning to make it close, but once again, the Cubs eventually got into a bad bullpen and capitalized. This time, Micah Owings was the victim - what has happened to him? - getting lit up for five runs in 1/3 inning. With a run already in, he walked Kosuke Fukudome and Mark DeRosa on consecutive at-bats, the latter walking in a run, and leaving the bases loaded. After being relieved by Leo Rosales, Reed Johnson comes to bat, and drives a ball to right-center for a much-disputed home run. Honestly, it did look like a fan interfered, plucking the ball as it was about to drop below the home run line. However, what you quickly learn after awhile in baseball is that it's better to be lucky than good, especially during a slump. We'll take it.
Thanks to Bob Howry for scaring all of us silly, by giving up a three-run home run to Chris Snyder in the 8th, his only inning of work. I know that most of that bullpen is a touch rusty, but these moments have been a touch too common for me this season, and it might be time to look into some other late-inning options. Chad Gaudin has looked extremely effective so far as a Cub, and while I know you hate to play with roles this late in the season, it might be wise to relegate Bob to middle relief duty for awhile.
Oh, and Soriano? 1-5, with a K. Don't ask me how good he looked, as normally some of the pitches that he was swinging at I'd attribute to rust, but this is Soriano we're talking about, so who knows. Let's see what happens tonight.
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