CHICAGO – With the wind blowing out Saturday at Wrigley Field, pitcher Mike Minor didn't give up any home runs and hit one himself. It was a good day to be a Brave.
Chris Johnson hit a pair of two-run homers in his first two at-bats, including one that drove in the first runs of a six-run fourth inning that sent the Braves to a 11-6 win against the Cubs in the penultimate game before the All-Star break.
The Braves, who had one home run in their previous 12 games, won for just the second time in seven games and evened the series at a game apiece.
“It was one of those days where you get the ball up in the air and it keeps traveling,” said Johnson, whose two homers matched his total from his previous 86 games. “Mike battled. It’s a tough place to pitch on days like this, but he battled his butt off and kept us in the game, and we were able to get enough.”
The Braves will send ace Julio Teheran to the mound Sunday against lefty Travis Wood in the series finale and last game before the four-day break.
“We needed all the offense we could get, because the wind was blowing out,” said manager Fredi Gonzalez, whose Braves were a half-game ahead of second-place Washington in the NL East standings, pending the outcome of the Nationals’ game against Philadelphia. “It was typical Wrigley Field with the wind blowing out – you never felt comfortable.
“You could tell the way some of the balls (carried), some of the routes our outfielders were running.”
After homering in the third game of the season, Johnson had two homers and 18 RBIs in 332 at-bats since then, before driving balls to the left-field bleachers in the second and fourth innings against Edwin Jackson (5-10).
Minor (3-5) didn’t have one of his best pitching lines – six innings, 11 hits, six runs – but he was good enough to snap his nine-start winless streak and improve to 6-0 in six career starts against the Cubs. The win was the first for the left-hander since May 19 against Milwaukee. He was 0-3 with a 4.86 ERA and 10 homers allowed in nine starts between wins.
“It’s been a while,” Minor said. “But the wins will come, like I say, if I pitch well.”
His fourth-inning homer off Jackson was the second in 182 career at-bats for Minor, who hit one against the Mets in New York last season on May 25.
When asked if it was nice to be talking about hitting a homer and not giving one up, Minor said, “Yeah, but I still didn’t pitch very well… Well, I don’t know. They hit some good pitches today, and then I had a couple of swinging bunts. But I think it evened out, because they hit some balls on the screws that went right at guys.
“But it was one of those days where I feel like I made some good pitches, they just got hit.”
Andrelton Simmons had three hits and Justin Upton drove in four runs with two hits including a three-run double in the fourth inning.
“We came out and were able to score a couple of runs (in the second inning), then didn’t stop from there,” Upton said. “We just kept swinging, getting hits when we needed to with runners in scoring position. That’s something we haven’t done much lately. It definitely helps when you get those runs in.”
The Braves were 6-for-9 with runners in scoring position, after going 9-for-61 (.148) in those situations over the previous six games.
Four of the six runs against Minor scored on a passed ball and a pair of wind-blown doubles, including a liner off the glove of center fielder B.J. Upton.
Chris Coghlan added a two-run double in the fifth inning that went over the head of left fielder Justin Upton after he got a bad read on the ball and initially took a step or two in.
“You would get an initial read on the ball and then it would take off on you,” Upton said. “It’s something you have to know. We knew the wind was blowing out by the way the ball was carrying. It’s just, your eyes tell you something different.”
For Johnson, it was the third multi-homer game of his career and came at one of the third baseman’s favorite places to hit. The former Houston Astro has a .337 average with 11 extra-base hits and five home runs in 23 games at Wrigley Field.
The Cubs took a 2-0 lead in the first inning on a walk and four hits, including Chris Coghlan’s RBI double. The damage might have been worse if rookie catcher Christian Bethancourt hadn’t thrown out Justin Ruggiano trying to advance on ball that briefly got away from the catcher.
Johnson tied the score in the second when he crushed a hanging 1-and-0 slider, and the Braves moved ahead in the third after B.J. Upton hit a leadoff double and scored on Simmons’ single.
The Cubs came right back and tied it moved back ahead in the third when Ruggiano hit a leadoff double and scored on Welington Castillo’s double that glanced off B.J. Upton’s glove. But the Braves blew the game open in the fourth with six runs on a walk and five hits including Jason Heyward’s double to start the inning.
Heyward also had an RBI single in the ninth inning and has three doubles — all to center or left-center field — among his four hits in the series.
“We get him going and that’s a nice offense we run out there,” said Gonzalez, whose Braves had their highest-scoring game since a 13-10 win at Colorado on June 10.
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