Powered by four home runs, the Chicago Cubs crushed the visiting St. Louis Cardinals 12-1 on Friday and moved closer to securing home-field advantage in next week’s National League wild-card series.
Colin Rea (11-7) allowed just two hits and a walk over 5 2/3 scoreless innings. The right-hander also struck out seven in earning his first win since Aug. 20.
The Cubs (90-70) took full advantage of the wind blowing out to center field, with Nico Hoerner, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Michael Busch and Seiya Suzuki all going deep. Three of those blasts came off Miles Mikolas (8-11), who gave up six homers in a July 4 loss, also in Chicago.
Hoerner hit his seventh homer of the season with one out in the first. Crow-Armstrong followed in the fourth with a two-run shot. With his 30th homer of the season, to go along with 35 steals, he joined Sammy Sosa as the only Cubs players to join the 30-30 club.
Busch, who hit two of his three July 4 homers off Mikolas, made it 4-0 with his 32nd in the fifth.
Mikolas went five innings. He allowed four hits and a walk while striking out four.
Rea departed after giving up a two-out walk to Lars Nootbaar and a single from Ivan Herrera in the Cardinals’ sixth. Caleb Thielbar walked Alex Burleson to load the bases but got Nolan Arenado swinging to end the threat.
St. Louis (78-82) got on the board in the seventh. Nolan Gorman, who had two of the team’s five hits, led off with a double against Thielbar. Andrew Kittredge entered for the Cubs and Gorman scored on a Jordan Walker single.
The Cubs answered with a seven-run seventh highlighted by Suzuki’s grand slam off Chris Roycroft to make it 11-1. It was Suzuki’s 30th of the season, giving Chicago three players with 30-home runs for the first time since 2004 when they had four.
Ian Happ went 2-for-4 with a run and an RBI for the Cubs. Kyle Tucker, in his first game back after missing more than three weeks with a calf injury, went 1-for-4 and scored twice.
With Friday’s win, the Cubs’ magic number to earn the top NL wild-card seed is one.
