Zach gets shellacked as successful stretch comes to a halton June 19, 2021 at 3:48 am

Across his last nine starts, Davies had compiled a 1.86 ERA and allowed five total runs in his last five outings. Davies also had a 14 2/3 scoreless innings streak going since his rocky June 3 start against the Giants, but that was snapped Friday night.

In the third inning of the Cubs’ loss in the series opener against the Marlins, Davies gave up five runs.

After Jorge Alfaro’s leadoff single glanced off of Davies’ hip, Jon Berti singled and Jazz Chisholm walked to load the bases. Davies walked Starling Marte for the first run and then gave up a two-out grand slam to Adam Duvall for the other four of the inning.

Davies had pitched back-to-back quality starts this month, blanking the Padres on June 8 and the Cardinals on June 13.

“Getting ahead seemed to be a real factor,” manager David Ross said after Davies’ start against St. Louis. “The changeup seems to be devastating right now. I talk a lot about fastball command, but right now getting ahead with the fastball, knowing where that’s going when he wants to throw the fastball.”

Ross said after Davies’ last start that he was seeing better action on his fastball than earlier in the season. Davies said then that he felt like he was getting away with leaving his changeup up in the zone because hitters weren’t getting good swings on it.

“For me, the biggest thing is just disguising the changeup and fastball, being deceptive and seeing the way hitters approach the bat,” Davies said after his last start. “Trying to read their swing and trying to see what they’re trying to do in the bat gives me a little bit of an idea of what the next pitch is.”

But on Friday, it was changeups that Alfaro hit for a single and Duvall smacked into the outfield seats to give the Marlins a four-run lead in the third.

After his Sunday start against the Cardinals, Davies said that the key to sustaining his recent success would be watching how well his pitches moved and how well he could attack hitters. On Friday, he cruised through the first two innings on 20 pitches and then needed 24 to get out of the third.

Davies settled in four a couple of innings after the bumpy third inning and threw scoreless frames in the fourth and fifth before giving up a three-run homer to Berti in the sixth. Davies left the game after the sixth, having given up a career-high eight runs on seven hits while striking out two and walking three.

Given Kyle Hendricks’ return to form — after a rough April, eight of his last nine turns on the mound have been quality starts — and the return of Adbert Alzolay coming soon, having Davies pitching well would give the Cubs needed rotation depth.

Where their offense has a wins above replacement near the top third in baseball and the bullpen has the second-highest strikeout rate and lowest ERA, the starters have lagged behind. Their 4.57 ERA going into Friday was the twelfth-highest in baseball, and that mark will suffer after Davies’ eight-run night.

Joc Pederson had five home runs in June going into Friday’s game and added his sixth and seventh of the month in his first two at-bats. Pederson had exit velocities of 113.6 and 112.2 miles per hour Friday night for the highest he’s had since 2019. This was Pederson’s second multi-homer game of the season; he also hit two in Pittsburgh on May 25.

The Marlins’ Duvall had his ninth career multi-homer game Friday. Along with his third inning grand slam, Duvall hit a two-run shot off of Dan Winkler in the seventh to the left field bleachers.

Before Friday, the Cubs had lost just three games at Wrigley Field since May 1 after losing seven games at home in April.

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