The Los Angeles Dodgers, the defending champions, gave the Chicago Cubs a big night. When the Cubs scored 14 runs and 15 hits in the final three innings of a 16-0 victory on Saturday, the Dodgers suffered their worst home shutout loss in franchise history and their first loss of the season at home. The Dodgers, who have the highest payroll in baseball and have assembled a team of stars on huge contracts, gave the Cubs 21 hits, nine of which were for extra bases. To be fair, Miguel Rojas, an infielder for the Dodgers, pitched when the score was almost decided at 11-0, and he was responsible for five of the Cubs’ runs. “The boys came out swinging, and it was pretty cool to see,” said Chicago’s Carson Kelly, who had three hits and homered twice. “Kudos to our guys for working at-bats, really working counts, getting good pitches to drive and not missing them. We also did a good job of running the bases and taking walks… I think the mindset of this team is that we will fight until 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. In 10 career games against the Dodgers, the first baseman is batting.308 (12 for 39), with three home runs, six doubles, and 11 RBIs. Miguel Amaya had three hits, including a home run, in the fifth inning in place of Seiya Suzuki, who was hurt in the right wrist. Ian Happ drove in two runs with three hits. Kelly keyed a five-run seventh inning 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 Rojas for a two-run shot in the ninth.
Kelly responded, “You have to take a quick swing, not a big swing,” when asked how challenging it is to homer off a pitch traveling 40 mph. “You have to find the right timing of it.”
The Cubs have outscored opponents by 41 runs, nearly twice as many as any other team, and have scored 112 runs, 21 more than the second-place New York Yankees (91). This puts them in first place in the major leagues. 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.
Busch, Pages’ former minor league teammate, stated, “I saw him [make the catch] – unfortunately.” He is an excellent player. We will need to talk because I didn’t want him to do that. 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 Dodgers bullpen, which came into the game with the fourth-best ERA in baseball, was the obstacle for the Cubs to overcome. 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.
