*Photo from Bleed Cubbie Blue*
How's that for a series sweep? Dansby Swanson homered and drove in two runs, Seiya Suzuki drove in 3 of his own, and the Chicago Cubs defeated the Baltimore Orioles with an 8-0 shutout victory Thursday night in Baltimore.
The Cubs secured the 3 game sweep of the Orioles with the win, the first time the Orioles had been swept at home since 2021. The offense showed up in a big way, outscoring the AL East leading Orioles 21-2 over the 3 games as they picked up their 4th win in a row and 6th win in 7 games.
Cubs starting pitcher Justin Steele said of sweeping the Orioles "It's huge. It's the kind of thing you need to be doing, especially in the spot we're in. But we're feeling good. The boys are rolling right now. It's fun."
After the first two innings were scoreless, Suzuki gave the Cubs a 1-0 lead in the 3rd inning on a double that scored Michael Busch. In the 5th inning, Busch tripled the Cubs lead to 3-0 as he scored Nico Hoerner and Tomas Nido with a two run double. Busch then scored on a double from Suzuki to make it a 4-0 game.
Swanson extended the Cubs lead in the 6th, hitting his 9th home run of the season to make it a 5-0 game. Suzuki picked up another RBI in the 7th inning, scoring Busch on a triple to center field that made it 6-0. Ian Happ added an RBI double and Swanson hit an RBI single later in the inning to make it 8-0 Cubs.
It was Steele who got the start for the Cubs, picking up the win as he pitched 7 shutout innings while allowing 3 hits and striking out 4 hitters. Drew Smyly came on for the 8th and pitched a scoreless inning before Jorge Lopez did the same in the 9th to close out the win.
Cubs manager Craig Counsell said of Steele's start "I thought Justin was great. Efficient, just on the attack, tons of strikes. They couldn't get the barrel to it. The ball was kind of in on their hands most of the night."
Albert Suarez gave up 4 runs on 6 hits and two walks, striking out 4 hitters in 5 innings pitched for the Orioles, who lost for the 6th time in 10 games and the 3rd game in a row. Cole Irvin handled the next 4 innings in relief, allowing 4 runs on 7 hits.
Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said of the team's rough patch "We’re a good team. It’s been a rough few days. We just got flat-out beat and didn’t play well. We got beat. We got beat by starters. We didn’t do much against their bullpen. We didn’t play very good defense, for us. And we didn’t throw the ball very well, besides Corbin. So we’ve got to play a little better."
The Cubs travel to St. Louis to take on the rival Cardinals for the weekend, with Kyle Hendricks set to start the series opener. The Orioles welcome the New York Yankees to town in a matchup of the top two teams in the AL East, with Cade Povich expected to start Friday's series opener.
Comments
Post a Comment