Chicago Cubs vs. Colorado Rockies

The Colorado Rockies will look to win the series after evening up the set at one win apiece following their 3-1 victory in game two on Tuesday. Jon Gray pitched seven crisp innings for his second straight win after dropping three in a row.

Yu Darvish bounced back from a couple rough outings to hold the Brewers to just one unearned run over six frames in Friday’s 3-2 win. It was the third time they accomplished the feat in franchise history.

Fast forwarding to the bottom of the 7th, Kyle Schwarber tripled with one out in the inning.

“(Gray) was getting some low strikes”, Maddon said. He lamented the pitch location to leadoff man Charlie Blackmon and his choice of a curveball that David Dahl whacked for a 2-0 lead in the first.

With the wind blowing out on a warm night at Wrigley Field, Nolan Arenado also connected as Colorado stopped a three-game slide.

Then Gray cranked up his groundball machine.

Even more important for the Cubs was that they took over first place in the National League Central.

Gray found trouble in the fourth.

Putting up a slash line of.284/.346/.476 across 254 such plate appearances, Blackmon didn’t seem to enjoy hitting against righties on the road last season (compared to his total season slash line of.331/.399/.601). Instead, Gray gets attack more relentlessly the longer his start becomes. It paid off in the fifth when he struck out the side, whiffing Heyward and Ian Happ with 89 miles per hour sliders, before striking out Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks looking at a 95 miles per hour heater.

The Cubs will counter with right-hander Kyle Hendricks, who rebounded with his best start of the season last time out. The minutia of movement and rotation on the baseball was being perfectly manipulated by Ottavino, who was surgical with his precision, yet devastating with the movement on his pitches.

The Cubs produced only three hits off Anderson, though two of them were moonshots. You just keep making adjustments.

He did Tuesday night. Four games later, they would be on a four-game losing streak and on their way out of town. On Wednesday, they were handcuffed by Rockies lefty Tyler Anderson. I think he’s been fouling his pitch off. Chicago has a 3-4 ATS record over its last seven games and the under has hit in six of those seven.

“He made pitches, all the way through, which is a great sign”, manager Bud Black said.

The Rockies sent rookie outfielder Noel Cuevas – in full uniform and pushing a cart – on a coffee run prior to the game.

“Not really”, Maddon said.

McMahon, meanwhile, struggled in 50 at-bats, hitting.180 while striking out at a 36.7 percent clip.