The Chicago Cubs had a big night against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
One night after being shut out, the Cubs broke out for 14 runs and 15 hits in the final three innings of a 16-0 victory Saturday night, to hand the Dodgers their first home loss of the season and their worst home shutout loss in franchise history.
The Cubs finished 21 hits, including nine for extra bases.
“The boys came out swinging, and it was pretty cool to see,” said Chicago’s Carson Kelly, who homered twice among his three hits and drove in three runs. “Kudos to our guys for working at-bats, really working counts, getting good pitches to drive and not missing them. We also ran the bases well and took our walks … I think it’s just the mentality of this team that we’re gonna fight to the end no matter what the score is.”
Michael Busch, once a top prospect in the Dodgers’ farm system, had four hits, including a homer and two doubles, and drove in three runs. The first baseman is batting .308 (12 for 39) with three homers, six doubles and 11 RBIs in 10 career games against the Dodgers.
Ian Happ had three hits and scored two runs, and Miguel Amaya replaced the injured Seiya Suzuki (right-wrist pain) in the fifth inning and homered among his two hits and drove in three runs.
Kelly keyed a five-run seventh inning by with a homer 384 feet over the left-field wall against Dodgers reliever Ben Casparius, and then crushed a 391-foot homer on a floater from infielder-turned-pitcher Miguel Rojas for a two-run shot in the ninth.
“You have to take a quick swing, not a big swing,” Kelly said, when asked how hard it is to homer off a 40-mph pitch. “You have to find the right timing of it.”
The Cubs pushed their major league-league-leading run total to 112, which is 21 more than the second-place New York Yankees (91), and they have outscored opponents by 41 runs, a margin nearly twice as much as any other team.
Busch, who homered off Dodgers starter Roki Sasaki for a 1-0 lead in the second, came within inches of a monster game when he was robbed of a grand slam by center fielder Andy Pages to end the third.
“I saw him (make the catch) – unfortunately,” said Busch, a former minor league teammate of Pages. “He’s a good player. I didn’t want him to do that, so we’re gonna have to have a conversation.”
Sasaki (0-1) left with a 1-0 deficit after allowing one run and four hits in five innings, striking out three and walking two. However, the Cubs then broke through against a Dodgers bullpen that entered with a 2.15 ERA, the fourth-best mark in baseball.
Busch doubled and scored on Justin Turner’s RBI single off Casparius for a 2-0 lead in the sixth, and Amaya (single), Busch (single), Dansby Swanson (single) and Nico Hoerner (sacrifice fly) drove in runs after Kelly’s leadoff homer in the seventh.
Kyle Tucker had a two-run single and Amaya a two-run homer in the eighth, and the Cubs teed off on Rojas in the ninth.
The offensive outburst backed a superb start by Cubs right-hander Ben Brown, who used only two pitches – a four-seam fastball that averaged 95.6 mph and a knuckle-curve that averaged 86.9 mph – to blank the Dodgers on five hits in six innings, striking out five and walking none.
Brown (2-1) gave up five runs and seven hits in four innings of his previous start, a no-decision against San Diego.
“Just trying to do the exact opposite of last week,” Brown said. “This past week was a grind working on things, mentally going through things, but I put in that effort, and it obviously showed tonight.
“I was able to slow the game down, slow the heart rate down, execute pitch by pitch and go back to where I was last year … when my stuff is there, we can get through lineups like that.”
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