Afternoon Box Score: Cubs Rally to Beat Pirates, White Sox Bats Stay Hot in Cleveland

By Chuck Sudo in News on Apr 2, 2011 8:30PM

Let's start in Cleveland, where the White Sox put up a lot of runs again and did so without the long ball in an 8-3 win over the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field. Edwin Jackson gets his first win of the season, going 6 innings and settling down after a shaky second inning in which he let the Tribe back into the game after being spotted a 5-0 lead. Chris Sale and Sergio Santos were stellar in relief of Jackson. On the offensive side, both Gordon Beckham and Carlos Quentin are off to torrid starts. Beckham was 2 for 4 at the plate and drove in two runs with a bases loaded single in the Sox' four-run second inning, while Quentin had two more doubles, one of them driving in a pair of runs. It's the Sox' first 2-0 start on the road since their World Series championship in 2005, but way too early to start thinking of bigger prizes.

Over at Wrigley Field the Cubs were set to lose their twelfth game to Pittsburgh in their past 17 contests, and Carlos Zambrano leaving the game with hand cramps was the last thing the Wrigley faithful needed to see. BUt the Cubs rallied with five runs in the eighth inning to pull out a 5-3 win. The rally started with a two out, two run double by Blake DeWitt, which allowed Sean Marshall to pick up the win. Carlos Marmol picked up his first save of the season. As for Zambrano, he put in a 99-pitch day, 61 of them strikes, gave up a leadoff home run to Geoff Jones in the seventh inning and was working a 2-2 count to Ronny Cedeno before trainer Mark O'Neill went to the mound to tend to the mercurial right-hander.