With a career batting average under .100 Torry Holt Jersey , Jon Lester might seem to be a pitcher who doesn’t care what he does at the plate.
Not true.
”It’s important to have good at-bats. I feel like I have done that regardless of the outcome,” he said.
Lester hit a three-run homer that highlighted an eight-run burst in the second inning and wound up with his NL-leading 11th win as the Chicago Cubs held off the Minnesota Twins 11-10 on Sunday.
”I’ve had good at-bats and I haven’t been just a one-pitch out guy. So I have worked some counts and I’ve been able to at least make the pitcher work,” he said. ”That’s all I’m trying to do.”
”If I get hits, I get hits,” he said. ”The home run is awesome, it’s cool, especially at home. It’s always fun to play here with the crowd and to be able to hit the ball into the bleachers. But at the end of the day I know I’m a pitcher and I’m not a hitter.”
Ian Happ also homered for the Cubs, who have scored at least 10 runs in four straight games for the first time since 1930. Chicago swept the three-game series and has won four in a row overall.
Brian Dozier hit a two-run homer and Jake Cave also homered for the Twins.
Minnesota concluded a 1-5 Chicago road trip that began with two losses in three tries to the White Sox, and fell 10 games below .500 for the first time this season.
Lester hit his second career home run, prompting a curtain call from the cheering fans.
Lester went 10 seasons, mostly in Boston with sporadic at-bats, before getting his first major league hit. Now, in his fourth season with the Cubs Vincent Rey Jersey , Lester has put more of an emphasis into hitting.
”I really didn’t care about hitting there” in Boston, he said. ”I’m worried about David (Ortiz) and (Dustin) Pedroia and all of the other guys driving in runs as opposed to me.”
”Coming over here, it can change the outcome of a game, so it becomes a little more important and you work on it all year. In spring training you’re doing it from part of the second week on,” he said.
Lester (11-2) allowed four runs, two of them earned, and nine hits in five-plus innings.
Mitch Garver hit a two-run homer off Dillon Maples as the Twins scored five times in the eighth. Maples, called up from Triple-A before the game when pitcher Brian Duensing went on the disabled list with a sore left shoulder, also allowed an RBI single to Logan Morrison and a two-run triple to Willians Astudillo.
”Their offense, we just had trouble with it. Lot of big innings, lot of crooked numbers. I think our guys stayed with it. We got some opportunities there and got some big hits to get back in the game. When you get as close as we did late, it makes you think about some of the runs we gave up along the way, so that’s frustrating D.J. Reader Jersey ,” Twins manager Paul Molitor said.
Javier Baez, who doubled twice, Happ and Willson Contreras each had three hits for the Cubs.
Cubs closer Brandon Morrow got one out in the eighth and pitched a scoreless ninth for his 18th save in 19 chances.
”They got out on us pretty early, but I love the fight of the guys in the dugout. I kind of had glimpses of last year’s team and our fight,” Dozier said.
In the third consecutive sweltering day at Wrigley Field with a gametime temperature at 93 degrees and a heat index at 101, the Cubs jumped all over Lance Lynn (5-7) in the second inning.
Baez doubled home two runs and Anthony Rizzo had an RBI double. Kyle Schwarber met reliever Matt Magill with the Cubs’ third straight double.
Cubs shortstop Addison Russell added an RBI single in the fourth inning and made a highlight grab in the sixth inning before leaving the game with an apparent injury resulting in the catch.
Russell bumped into Baez while making the running catch on Eduardo Escobar’s ball down the left-field line in foul territory. He walked off the field and into the dugout after talking to a team trainer and manager Joe Maddon. Maddon said Russell injured his left middle finger and he doesn’t believe it to be serious.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Twins: LF Eddie Rosario, one of three Twins to leave Saturday’s game due to heat was in the lineup on Sunday. Teammates Bobby Wilson and Max Kepler were available, as was infielder Ehire Adrianza, who received intravenous fluids after finishing the game.
”We just encouraged everyone last night to rest and hydrate the best they could again this morning to get themselves in positions to get through the game,” Molitor said. ”You just try to be aware of it. There’s not much you can do: You’ve got to play people and you’ve got to get through the game.” … SS Jorge Polanco’s 80-game performance-enhancing drug suspension ends Monday and Molitor said he expects him to rejoin the club in Milwaukee after a stint with Triple-A Rochester.
Cubs: OF Albert Almora didn’t start, but he came in the game in the eighth as a defensive replacement after leaving Saturday’s game due to dehydration. Almora suffered cramps in his legs and was removed in the fifth inning. Almora had a nice sliding catch in center to rob Kepler in the ninth.
UP NEXT
Twins: Visit Milwaukee on Monday as they continue their interleague schedule. Kyle Gibson (2-6) is the scheduled starter. He had another rough outing against the White Sox in his last start on June 27. He allowed five runs on a season-high 11 hits.
Cubs: RHP Kyle Hendricks (5-8) will try to bounce back from his shortest outing of season on Tuesday against the Tigers. Hendricks allowed six runs Kings coach John Stevens told Dustin Brown last summer he could still be a 20-goal scorer in the NHL after failing to hit that threshold for five consecutive seasons.
In retrospect, Stevens might have undersold what Brown is still capable of achieving.
Brown scored his fourth goal of the game 23 seconds into overtime and the Kings moved into third place in the Pacific Division with a 5-4 win over the Minnesota Wild on Thursday night.
Brown scored on a one-timer from the left circle to put the Kings one point ahead of Anaheim in the division, with Anze Kopitar setting up his 28th goal of the season. Brown set a career high with his 61st point.
”I thought his game was trending in the right direction last year Taylor Decker Jersey ,” Stevens said. ”I said if you’re not at least a 20-goal scorer again, then I don’t know what I’m doing. And he kind of laughed, but you could see he believed it, too. And he is.”
Brown is the 14th player in Kings history to score four goals in a game and the second to do so this season. Kopitar did it on March 22 against Colorado.
Tobias Rieder also scored, and Daniel Brickley had an assist for his first point in his NHL debut. Jonathan Quick made 23 saves for the Kings’ fourth win in five games.
Drew Doughty had an assist to become the fourth Kings defenseman with 50 in a season. Doughty also set a career high with his 60th point.
Matt Dumba scored for the second straight game, and Nate Prosser had a short-handed goal for the Wild, who will play Winnipeg in the first round of the playoffs.
Ryan Murphy and Eric Staal each had a goal, and Alex Stalock made 23 saves. Mikko Koivu had three assists and Mikael Granlund had two assists.
Brown got his first hat trick since Feb. 25, 2012, by scoring with 49.3 seconds left in the second.
Prosser tied it at 4-4 at 9:24 of the third period after Staal scored his 41st at 5:42 during a delayed penalty to cut the deficit to 4-3.
”There’s a lot of good you can take from this game,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. ”You battled back against the team that’s the best third-period team in the League. They stayed with the program and consequently got rewarded for it a little bit.”
Brown got the Kings on the board 55 seconds into the game, but Murphy tied the game at 1 when his shot into traffic redirected off Christian Folin and past Quick at 3:12, and Dumba put the Wild ahead at 5:02.
But Brown kept creating scoring chances. He made it 2-all when he scored during a 5-on-3 power play at 7:42 Gerald Everett Jersey , waiting at the front of the net to score off Jeff Carter’s centering pass.
”You just plug away really,” Brown said of his turnaround. ”I got an opportunity this year to play big minutes and be a huge part of the team. That’s probably the more important thing is that I was able to help the team make the playoffs.”
However, Brown was more concerned with how the Kings let the Wild back into the game and what it might portend headed into the playoffs.
”I don’t know what it is in our DNA, but we seem to make it hard on ourselves a lot,” Brown said. ”The thing is we do that and then we come back and win, so the stats probably lie a little bit when you see the record holding a lead after two periods. We try to get heroics every night, which is probably something we need to avoid next week.”
NOTES: Kings F Torrey Mitchell and D Paul LaDue did not play because of flu-like symptoms. The Kings recalled F Jonny Brodzinski and D Oscar Fantenberg from their AHL affiliate on Thursday, but both were scratched against the Wild. … The Wild signed D Louis Belpedio to a two-year, entry-level contract on Thursday. Belpedio, a third-round draft pick of the Wild in 2014 who played college hockey at Miami of Ohio, could make his NHL debut on Saturday.
UP NEXT
Wild: Visit the San Jose Sharks on Saturday night.
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08.09.2018 03:11
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