Scoring by accident a winner for Cubs

Posted: Monday, May 13, 2013 7:00 pm

WASHINGTON (AP) — Welington Castillo got his bat on the ball at precisely the right time.
Even though it was a complete accident and Castillo didn’t get credit for a hit, his bat essentially won the game for the Chicago Cubs.
Alfonso Soriano scored the tiebreaking run in the ninth inning after a one-of-a-kind throw by Washington catcher Kurt Suzuki went for an error, and the Cubs rallied to beat the Nationals 2-1 Sunday.
The Cubs didn’t have a baserunner through the first five innings and trailed 1-0 entering the eighth before coming back in the deciding matchup of a three-game series.
Facing Nationals closer Rafael Soriano (0-1) in the ninth, Alfonso Soriano singled and took second on a single by Julio Borbon. After Ryan Sweeney struck out, both runners took off on a double steal with Castillo at the plate.
Suzuki’s throw hit Castillo’s bat. The ball veered well to the left of third base and into foul ground, allowing Alfonso Soriano to scoot home.
“I was just standing there and I just feel the ball hitting my bat and the ball fly into the outfield,” Castillo said.
If Castillo moved into the throw, interference would have been called.
“I didn’t move. I just looked,” Castillo said. “Only thing that I say when (Suzuki) said something to the umpire is, ‘I didn’t move.’ And the umpire said, ‘I see you didn’t move.”’
Cubs manager Dale Sveum said, “The way you draw it up, that’s the way you do it. Make the catcher get around you. Don’t let him have the throwing lane.”
Suzuki shrugged his shoulders afterward and said, “That’s the first time I have ever done something like that, let alone saw it. It’s one of those things, where a freak thing happens like that.”
The Cubs won the final two games of the series, even though the Nationals started Stephen Strasburg and Gio Gonzalez.
Rockies 8, Cardinals 2
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jaime Garcia got rocked again by Colorado and fell well short of giving the St. Louis Cardinals three straight pitching gems.
“I made a couple mistakes and paid the consequences,” Garcia said after allowing two homers that accounted for five runs in an 8-2 loss to the Rockies on Sunday. “Those guys had been doing an unbelievable job and you want to be able to continue a good thing.”
Jorge De La Rosa held the Cardinals hitless into the seventh inning and Troy Tulowitzki’s three-run homer ended Colorado’s scoreless streak at 28 innings.
De La Rosa did not give up a hit until David Freese’s two-out single in the seventh, answering a pair of outstanding performances by St. Louis starters Shelby Miller and Adam Wainwright over the weekend.
“Jaime definitely had a couple of pretty tough acts to follow,” manager Mike Matheny said. “We know this is a good-hitting team, we know they’re capable of jumping on you and putting up a lot of runs in a hurry. It happened today.”
Garcia (4-2) had won three straight starts with a 1.25 ERA and no homers allowed in that stretch of 212⁄3 innings before running into the Rockies. He gave up five runs over six innings and fell to 0-3 with a 10.53 ERA — his highest against any opponent — in four starts against Colorado.
The left-hander entered as the career ERA leader at 8-year-old Busch Stadium at 2.41 but was undone by a changeup that stayed up in the zone against Tulowitzki in the third and a hanging curveball against Charlie Blackmon, who struck out in his first two at-bats, that went for a two-run homer in the sixth.
Giants 5, Braves 1
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Pablo Sandoval splashed a home run into McCovey Cove, Brandon Belt and Marco Scutaro also connected to back Tim Lincecum, and the San Francisco Giants beat the Atlanta Braves 5-1 on Sunday to wrap up a strong homestand.
Lincecum (3-2) struck out seven in seven scoreless innings to end a three-start winless stretch in which he went 0-2. He also stopped a four-start skid against Atlanta, beating the Braves for the first time since April 11, 2010.
Belt hit a solo homer in the second, Sandoval connected in the third and Scutaro went deep leading off the fifth. Gregor Blanco had an RBI double.
Brandon Crawford added an RBI single in the fourth for the Giants, who wrapped up a 7-3 homestand. San Francisco won a home series against the NL East for the first time since April last year.

Published in The Messenger 5.13.13