Baez, Lester spark Chicago
Home run in eighth wins pitching duel against Cueto.
CHICAGO — Jon Lester outpitched Johnny Cueto with eight sparkling innings, Javier Baez homered in the eighth and the Chicago Cubs beat the San Francisco Giants 1-0 in a tense Game 1 of their NL Division Series on Friday night.
Lester retired his last 13 batters in a dominant performance, but the game was scoreless when Baez sent Angel Pagan scrambling to the left-field wall with a towering drive. With a raucous crowd of 42,148 and every player anxiously tracking the flight of the ball, Pagan ran out of room as it landed in the basket that tops the ivy-covered walls at Wrigley Field.
Aroldi s Chapman gave up Buster Posey’s two-out double off the ivy in the ninth before Hunter Pence bounced to second for the final out, wrapping a bow on Chicago’s first meaningful game in weeks.
B e f o r e t h e g a me , t h e Giants put Eduardo Nunez on their roster for the series, a n d h e p i n c h - h i t i n t h e ninth inning. The infielder had been sidelined with a strained right hamstring.
Nunez, an AL All-Star this season with Minnesota, had not played since Sept. 25. Conor Gillaspie replaced him for the wild-card game Wednesday night and hit a three-run homer in the ninth inning of San Francisco’s 3-0 win against the New York Mets.
Right-hander Jason Hammel was left off the Cubs’ roster after he had a career-best 15 wins this year. Hammel didn’t make the postseason rotation and was hampered by right elbow tightness at the end of the season.
Game 2: Jeff Samardzija has started plenty of games at Wrigley Field — just not in the playoffs. He will make his first postseason start in the same place he began his major league career in Game 2 tonight.
Samardzija was drafted by the Cubs in 2006 and spent his first 6½ seasons with the team before he was traded to Oakland in the 2014 deal that brought shortstop Addison Russell to the Cubs.
“Obviously, everything’s a little different when you pitched in one place for so long and then have to go do it on the other side,” he said. “But really not worried about that too much. I’m just excited that I’m getting an opportunity to pitch in a playoff game”
Samardzija’s only playoff appearance was a relief outing for the Cubs against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 2008 Division Series.
Chicago Game 2 starter Kyle Hendricks went 16-8 with a major league-best 2.13 ERA.