It was another extremely windy day at Wrigley. The Cubs needed to take advantage of the weather to help jump start a stagnant offense. On the flip side, Randy Wells needed to keep the ball down against the number 1 home run hitting team in the league.
No one expected Randy Wells to throw a shutout with the wind gusting out. He didn’t. Wells allowed 5 runs on 8 hits in 6 innings. He struck out 8 and walked none.
Luckily for Wells, his offense finally broke out their bats and played long ball. The Cubs touched Arizona’s pitching staff for 11 runs including 4 homers.
Kosuke Fukudome hit his 2nd homerun in as many days. Alfonso Soriano hit a 3 run bomb to put the Cubs ahead in the 6th while Geovany Soto and Marlon Byrd went back to back in the 8th. Despite the wind, it was encouraging to see Chicago score some runs since they’ve been in a horrible slump the last few games.
The bullpen did their job too. John Grabow pitched a scoreless 7th inning. Grabow has been 1 of the most inconsistent pitchers in the ‘pen despite being the veteran of the group. Carlos Zambrano made another appearance from the bullpen and held the Diamondbacks scoreless in the 8th.
The other Carlos (Marmol) shut the door on Arizona in the 9th in a non-save situation. Marmol allowed the lone walk by Chicago’s pitching staff but struck out the side, lowering his ERA to a measly 0.77.
Final Score: Cubs (11-13) 11 – Diamondbacks (11-12) 5
WP: Randy Wells (3-0)
LP: Rodrigo Lopez (2-0)
The same 2 teams will be at it again on Saturday for game 3 of a 4 game series. Arizona will have it’s ace on the mound in Dan Haren (3-1) while the Cubs will have Carlos Silva (2-0) pitching.