Cubs crush Pirates, 21-0, handing them worst loss in franchise history
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The Pittsburgh Pirates take great pride in their ability to rally from deficits behind timely hitting and a dominant bullpen, even if manager Derek Shelton jokes that they give him heart palpitations.
This time, there was no chance for a comeback.
Instead, the Pirates became the punchline as they were handed their worst loss in franchise history.
An Alfonso Rivas three-run homer highlighted an eight-run second inning, as the Chicago Cubs cruised to a 21-0 win Saturday afternoon at Wrigley Field. It came 12 years and a day after a 20-0 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers on April 22, 2010.
“We’ve got to flush this one,” Shelton said. “We just didn’t play well. There’s no way around it. We just didn’t play a good ballgame. They played a good ballgame. We’ll flush it and try to win the series tomorrow.”
The Cubs cracked 23 hits, including 18 singles, to snap a three-game losing streak. Seven Cubs had multiple hits, led by Nico Hoerner (4 for 5) and four others who had three. Rivas led the Cubs with five RBIs, while three others drove in three runs.
Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks (1-1) held the Pirates to two hits while striking out two with no walks on 76 pitches over seven scoreless innings. Anthony Alford got an infield single for a third hit in the ninth.
“We’ve seen him a bunch of times, and I don’t know if I’ve seen a two-seamer from him as sharp,” Shelton said of Hendricks. “Just looking at a couple replays on the board, he threw some fastballs that started in the middle of the plate and ended up off the plate and our guys took some swings and ended up jamming themselves. And the good swings we did take … the balls went right at people.”
Pirates right-hander Zach Thompson (0-2) was tagged for nine runs (four earned) on nine hits and two walks in two innings and Miguel Yajure gave up seven runs on seven hits and one walk in 2 1/3. Lefty Aaron Fletcher gave up one run on three hits in 2 1/3.
“I got a lot of soft contact. I think that’s what we were pushing for going into this start, to make sure we got groundballs and weak contact and we did that,” Thompson said. “We can’t help the fact that they hit it where we weren’t. It was just one of those days.”
The Cubs started scoring early, as Ian Happ singled to left to drive in Seiya Suzuki for a 1-0 lead in the first inning. Thompson escaped a bases-loaded jam by getting Jason Heyward to pop up to second.
The second inning was simply a disaster.
The Cubs got four consecutive hits, including an RBI single by Suzuki and a two-run single by Willson Contreras for a 4-0 lead. That’s when Pirates shortstop Kevin Newman made the first of two errors, giving the 2021 NL Gold Glove finalist more (four) in 12 games this season than he had (three) in 453 chances over 132 games last year.
After Thompson walked Patrick Wisdom to load the bases, Newman botched a bad hop on what could have been an inning-ending double play on a Jonathan Villar grounder. Instead, Ian Happ and Contreras both scored for a 6-0 lead.
“The breaking ball was up. It had a lot of depth to it but just stayed in the zone,” Shelton said of Thompson. “Everything they hit found a hole, too. We had the stretch where we didn’t catch the ball. We had a chance to get out of an inning.”
Then it got worse.
Rivas, recalled Friday from Triple-A Iowa when Clint Frazier went on the 10-day injured list with appendicitis, smashed a 416-foot, three-run home run to right field to give the Cubs a 9-0 lead.
Yajure replaced Thompson and recorded a 1-2-3 third inning before getting pounded for two runs in the fourth and five in the fifth. Yajure gave up four doubles in the fifth before being pulled after Rivas singled for his fifth RBI.
The Cubs stretched their lead to 17-0 when Jason Heyward singled and scored on Nico Hoerner’s single that glanced off the glove of a leaping Newman at short.
It got so bad that rookie Diego Castillo, who started in right field, ended up pitching the eighth inning and giving up three runs. With a bases-loaded single to make it 18-0, Wisdom became the 10th Cubs batter to get a hit. Villar added a two-run single to make it 20-0 and Heyward hit into a double play to score Wisdom for the three-touchdown lead.
“It was just one of those days where things didn’t go right for us and we didn’t play well,” Shelton said. “That’s why the score was what it was.”