Anthony Rizzo, Addison Russell break out of slump to ignite Cubs in Game 4
LOS ANGELES – Addison Russell and Anthony Rizzo, both batting well below .100 in the playoffs, finally delivered big swings.
Ben Zobrist merely laid down a bunt, but it provided the biggest momentum swing.
After the Chicago Cubs tied the National League Championship Series with a cathartic 10-2 victory in Wednesday’s Game 4, their clubhouse was abuzz with talk of the bunt single that unleashed the normally potent offense, which erupted for 13 hits.
Chicago had not scored a run in 21 consecutive innings, its longest drought ever in the postseason, and Los Angeles Dodgers rookie Julio Urias was coming off his third shutout inning, striking out two in the third.
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The 3-4-5 hitters in the Cubs’ batting order had gone 2-for-35 to that point in the series, driving in a mere four runs, when Zobrist beat out a bunt leading off the fourth. He might as well have turned on a giant spigot, as the Cubs let loose with a deluge of runs not matched in an NLCS game in five years.
Soft singles by Javier Baez and Willson Contreras followed, and Russell’s two-run homer capped a four-run inning that gave Chicago a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.
“You cannot forget about the little things of the game,’’ said Contreras, who drove in the first run and also picked off a runner. “If you can bunt for a hit, you can get on base, that’s how you start a rally. That was big for us. That got us going.’’
The Cubs’ stretch of offensive futility had become the central theme of this series after they got shut out on back-to-back postseason games for the first time ever. Nobody embodied that frustration more than Rizzo and Russell.
Rizzo, an MVP candidate who was 2-for-26 in the playoffs with no extra-base hits or RBI, struck out the first two times up against Urias. Rizzo was so exasperated with his slump, he borrowed the bat of outfielder Matt Szczur when he went up to the plate for the third time.
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That seemed to do the trick, as Rizzo clobbered a leadoff home run in the fifth off Pedro Baez, then added a two-RBI single in a five-run sixth that broke open the game.
“I hit well with his bat, so he has hits in it,’’ Rizzo said. “Same size, just different model and different name, and it worked.’’
Russell, who was third on the team in home runs (21) and RBI (95) during the season, had struggled even worse than Rizzo, managing one hit in 24 at-bats. He was in an 0-for-17 skid before his home run, and fans in Chicago had started to clamor for manager Joe Maddon to sit down his starting shortstop and move Baez from second to short.
Russell put an end to that talk with a 3-for-5 night – he was one of four Cubs with multiple hits – batting out of the eighth hole. As opposed to Rizzo, Russell said he didn’t change anything except for lowering his hands a bit, and mostly trusted his work ethic.
Veteran catcher Miguel Montero said players of that caliber merely need to keep plugging away and eventually will find success again.
“You have to believe in yourself, believe you’re a good hitter, because he’s been doing it all year,’’ Montero said. “This guy got 90-some RBI, 20-some homers. That means he can hit, because they don’t sell those at Walgreens.’’
Nor do they sell the kind of momentum the Cubs have now regained, with a return trip to Chicago now assured, their bats finally back in gear and staff ace Jon Lester taking the mound Thursday.
The Cubs’ offense got rolling to such an extent that winning pitcher Mike Montgomery contributed a single in the sixth, becoming just the third reliever in LCS history to pick up a victory and a hit.
But the swings that truly pleased Maddon were the ones taken by Russell and Rizzo, because they may signal a return to their normal productive ways.
“More than anything, it’s about confidence,’’ Maddon said. “And I want to believe they’re going to show up tomorrow with a lot more confidence than they showed up with today.’’
The same goes for his whole club.
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