Chicago Cubs Recap: Kris Bryant launches walk-off homer to end skid

Motte, Soriano blow lead; Bryant pulls through

Well, that escalated quickly, didn’t it?

With the Chicago Cubs trailing by a run in the bottom of the ninth and Dexter Fowler standing on first with two outs, All-Star third baseman Kris Bryant launched his first career two-run walk-off homer to sink the Colorado Rockies by the final score of 9-8 at Wrigley Field.

Reliever’s Jason Motte and Rafael Soriano both entered the game looking to slam the door on the power surging Rockies, but were unable to do so as Colorado tagged them for a combined four earned runs which put them up 8-7.

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Outfielder Carlos Gonzalez homered twice in tonight’s game, taking starter Kyle Hendricks deep to left-center field in the third and drilled his second two-run bomb of the evening in the ninth to give his club the lead.

Hendricks (4-5, 3.81 ERA) gave up four earned runs on seven hits while issuing three walks and recording four strikeouts prior to being pulled after five innings of work.

Former Cub and 2015 All-Star, DJ LeMahieu extended the Rockies (42-55) lead to 4-0 with a two-run RBI single back in the fourth inning to score Ben Paulsen and Michael McKenry.

Jorge De La Rose (6-4, 5.03 ERA) held the Cubs (52-46) hitless until the bottom half of the fourth inning when their struggling offense was able to hang a huge six spot.

After Fowler and Kyle Schwarber worked back-to-back walks, Bryant backed Hendricks with an RBI single to Corey Dickerson out in left field to cut the lead to 4-1. First baseman Anthony Rizzo kept things going with a single of his own to Charlie Blackmon to load up the bases full of Cubbies, still with no outs in the frame.

Jorge Soler made it a two-run ballgame on an RBI single of his own to score Schwarber from third. Chris Denorfia followed that up with a groundout to LeMaheiu, pushing Bryant across to score which made it 4-3 with shortstop Starlin Castro due up behind him.

Castro – who has been linked to trade rumors involving the Padres – gave the Cubs their first lead of the game with a two-run RBI single to left field to keep things going for Hendricks.

Shortly after Hendricks laid down a sacrifice bunt to advance Castro to second, rookie second baseman Addison Russell recorded his 18th double of the season on a hard-hit ball to left, making it 6-4 Chicago.

They would record their seventh run of the game on a throwing error by third baseman Nolan Arenado in the sixth.

It feels good to be back in the win column after that terrible weekend series against the Phillies. Now it’s time to improve the depth chart just a tad.

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