Padres outlast Cubs 3-2 in 15-inning thriller
By Brad Rowland
On a day when the two starting pitchers for the San Diego Padres and Chicago Cubs allowed 0 earned runs over more than 13 innings combined, it was more than fitting that it took 15 innings to declare a winner. After 5 hours and 13 minutes of game time, Nick Hundley singled to center field in the bottom of the 15th inning, and Logan Forsythe crossed the plate for the winning run in a 3-2 thriller.
The aforementioned starting pitching battle between Andrew Cashner and Chris Rusin was as good as the numbers indicate. Cashner plowed through 7 innings of shutout ball while allowing only 2 hits and striking out 7 batters, and Rusin was almost as spectacular, getting through 6.1 innings with only 7 base-runners. In fact, neither team managed to send a runner across the plate until the 13th inning, and even then, the two teams couldn’t get away from each other.
In the top half of the 13th, Nate Schierholtz grounded into a fielder’s choice (with some help from an error) that pushed the game’s first run across, and Brian Bogusevic added a sacrifice fly to give Chicago what looked to be an insurmountable lead. However, the Padres responded in the bottom half with a triple from Ronnie Cedeno, and Cedeno tied the game when scored via a wild pitch shortly after. Those 13th-inning fireworks set the stage for the walk-off effort in the 15th, and that was that.
Late August games between two teams that are well out of the playoff race aren’t usually entertaining. However, the fact that the Padres and Cubs can absolutely captivate an audience for an entire Sunday afternoon speaks volumes about the power of great baseball, and this was a fun one.