Mike Montgomery is at his best when he is filling up the zone with all of his pitches. When he does it, he won’t necessarily get a ton of strikeouts, but he can get a lot of ground balls and pitch very economically.
So it was for Montgomery tonight, who got 10 groundouts over his seven innings. He walked no one and struck out four. Only a Jordy Mercer solo homer in the 8th bounced him from the game.
He pitched plenty well enough for the Cubs in this one, who got a run early on an Ian Happ single. They added another when Anthony Rizzo missed a grand slam by just a few feet, and it instead turned into a tremendous catch at the wall by Andrew McCutchen and a mere sacrifice fly to give the Cubs a 2-0 lead.
The Cubs had another bases loaded situation in the 7th, and got a lucky break when Alex Avila grounded to Sean Rodriguez deep in the 3-4 hole, and Rodriguez threw the ball away toward home, and then Chris Stewart threw the ball away into center field. The result was three insurance runs for the Cubs, and a lot of yakety sax:
Fixed: Benny Hill music added. pic.twitter.com/5dFB24xuDi
— ⓂarcusD (@_MarcusD2_) August 29, 2017
Carl Edwards Jr. and Wade Davis finished things off, and the Cubs got back on the winning path.