NO JOY IN CUBVILLE
Murphy ties home run mark and deGrom is sharp as Mets take commanding 3-0 lead in NLCS.
The Mets pushed Chicago to the brink of elimination, winning at Wrigley Field to take a 3-0 lead in the National League Championship Series. Daniel Murphy scored New York’s final run in the seventh, beating the throw to Miguel Montero.
NEW YORK METS 5 CHICAGO CUBS 2
CHICAGO — Maybe somebody can stop Daniel Murphy and solve these young New York Mets aces.
Sure hasn’t happened so far in the playoffs.
Murphy homered in his recordtying fifth consecutive postseason game, Jacob deGrom pitched seven strong innings and the Mets beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-2, Tuesday night for a 3-0 lead in the National League Championship Series.
“I’ve watched a lot of baseball over the years, I don’t think I’ve seen anybody put on this kind of a show on this stage like he has so far,” Collins said of Murphy. “I mean, even the guys in the dugout, they’re baseball guys too, and they’re saying the same thing.”
A cluster of New York fans gathered in the rain behind the team’s dugout after the final out and chanted “Let’s go, Mets!” And with a win Wednesday night at Wrigley Field, the Mets will be going to their first World Series in 15 years.
Rookie left-hander Steven Matz gets the start for the Mets in Game 4 while Jason Hammel goes for the Cubs.
After going 0-7 against the Cubs during the regular season, New York is overpowering them with its arms and bats.
Yoenis Cespedes and David Wright each had three hits for the Mets. Cespedes scored the goahead run on a two-out wild pitch by Trevor Cahill on a strikeout of Michael Conforto in the sixth inning.
Murphy tied the mark set by Houston’s Carlos Beltran in 2004 with his home run off Kyle Hendricks in the third.
DeGrom followed up dominant starts by Matt Harvey and Noah Syndergaard in New York with one of his own. The 2014 NL rookie of the year held the Cubs’ big bats to two runs and four hits. He struck out seven, walked one and retired his final 11 batters.
The right-hander with the flowing hair improved to 3-0 in his first postseason, with all of the wins coming on the road. Jeurys Familia closed for his fifth save of the postseason.
Kyle Schwarber had the towelwaving crowd shaking 101-year-old Wrigley Field to its foundation in the first inning with his club-record fifth homer of the postseason. Jorge Soler also had them roaring with his solo drive in the fourth to tie the score, 2-2. But Manager Joe Maddon’s Cubs have just five runs in this series.
Barring an epic comeback, a World Series title drought that dates to 1908 will continue. Only one other team has won a playoff series after dropping the first three games.
General Manager Theo Epstein’s Boston Red Sox came back against the New York Yankees in the 2004 AL Championship Series and ultimately ended one long championship curse. Now, the team he constructed in Chicago, one that stirred the imaginations of long-suffering fans, finds itself in a similar spot.
“Of course you think about those things, you think about the parallels, think about the fact that that happened against a New York team,” Maddon said. “We think about all that stuff, but it’s up to us to go out and play and execute.”
Cespedes broke the 2-2 tie when he led off the sixth with a single against Cahill and scored from third with two out as Conforto swung at a 2-2 pitch in the dirt. The ball rolled to the backstop, allowing the runner to reach first and extending the inning.
Conforto was forced to stay at third when Wilmer Flores’ drive that rolled to the ivy in right field was called a ground-rule double. That drew a heated argument from Collins.
The Mets added two more runs in the seventh on an RBI single by Cespedes and a groundout by Lucas Duda off Justin Grimm that made it 5-2.
Hendricks went four innings for Chicago, giving up two runs and five hits.