PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 Jameson Taillon allowed two hits in six innings, and Michael Busch and Pete Crow-Armstrong homered as the Chicago Cubs beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 4-0 on Monday night and got closer to clinching a postseason berth.<\/p>\n
Chicago (86-64) opened a four-game lead over San Diego for the top NL wild card and trails NL Central-leading Milwaukee by five games with 12 games remaining. The Cubs won for the fifth time in six games and sent the Pirates to their ninth loss in 10 games.<\/p>\n
Taillon (10-6) struck out out three and walked two, retiring 15 of 16 batters during a stretch from the first until the sixth. He is 3-0 with a 1.61 ERA since returning Aug. 18 from a strained left groin.<\/p>\n
Michael Soroka, Porter Hodge, and Brad Keller finished a three=hitter, the Cubs\u2019 14th shutout, with Keller getting one out for his second save this season.<\/p>\n
Busch homered in the second, his 28th this season, and Nico Hoerner scored on a wild pitch later in the inning by Braxton Ashcraft (4-3), who gave up three runs and six hits in four innings.<\/p>\n
Crow-Armstrong and Dansby Swanson hit consecutive doubles in the fourth, and Crow-Armstrong connected for his 29th homer in the sixth against Cam Sanders.<\/p>\n
Key moment<\/p>\n
Keller reliever with the bases loaded and struck out Jared Triolo.<\/p>\n
Key stat<\/p>\n
Chicago is 13-9 in a stretch of 24 consecutive games against teams with sub-.500 records.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Cubs rookie RHP Cade Horton (10-4, 2.70 ERA) faces RHP Paul Skenes (10-9, 1.92), the major league ERA leader, on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/p>\n
John Perrotto, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH (AP) \u2014 Jameson Taillon allowed two hits in six innings, and Michael Busch and Pete Crow-Armstrong homered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-147043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}