The Cubs and Giants got together on a beautiful Sunday morning, and as usual, a tight well played ball game was the result.
The Cubs jumped out to a 3-0 lead, in the top of the first on a single and a stolen base by Shawn Maney. A fielder's choice moved Maney to third, with two outs, and an errant throw by the Giants' shortstop on a subsequent grounder allowed him to score the games first run. Dave Mitchell followed with a RBI triple, and Andy Hoyle followed with a RBI single to give the Cubs a 3-0 headstart.
The Cubs padded that advantage to 5-0 in the top of the 4th. Andy Hoyle and Mike Ferraro set the table with a pair of one-out singles. They moved up to 2nd and 3rd on a fielder's choice. TJ Scorsone came up with the clutch two-out two RBI single.
The Giants were unable to solve Cubs starter, Mike Girard, through the first 4 innings, but got a couple of runs in the bottom of the 5th. Joe Burns got the RBI single and Fred Pigeon added sacrafice fly.
The top of the sixth saw the Cubs adding an insurance run on a lead off single by Girard, and a HBP and two walks (Chris Dunn getting the RBI walk).
The Giants again got 2 runs, in the bottom of the 6th, to close to 6-4. This time Jan Friedman and Mario Arduini got the RBI hits.
With the game still in doubt, heading into the bottom of the 7th, Girard was able to get a strike out, a pop out to second, and a ground out to second, to secure the victory.
The victory moves the Cubs (8-1) into first place ahead of the Giants (7-2), pending the Bombers' (7-1) game with the Blue Jays.
-- Edited by mgirard11 on Sunday 24th of July 2016 04:04:21 PM
Great game guys... Hard to hold the G-men down and nice pitching and D to do so...
We hit the ball hard all day and beat the Blue Jays...
Ryno had another BIG FLY and several other laser beams, plus like 14 RBI's or something... D-Bakes pitched a CG gem and also went yard as well...
I spoke w/Jimmy MacQ briefly after your game and we need to get John K to clarify what our remaining schedules are because we were originally supposed to play you guys a 3rd time on 8/28 but we have a game at Cooperstown on that date against the G-men and is a make-up of a rain out... Not sure how you ended up having the Royals on that date now and 3 against them...
We both only have 15 games on the schedule and now with the new playoff format and us getting an extra 17th reg season game as the compromise to not playing in the early rounds, we may end up playing 4 times and the seeding will obviously matter...
The Royals can't end up having us both 3 times though as that is not fair to them and yet they only play the Giants once it looks like now, so there seems to be a scheduling quirk and now with the rain outs and such, who knows what's going on...
We obviously just all need to know so that guys can plan accordingly as we head into the dog days of August and the pennant race heats up baby!
Woo-Hoo!
Good game Cubbies!
-- Edited by Marcus Aurelius on Sunday 24th of July 2016 09:26:23 PM
