Cubs belt 5 HRs, but questions linger for Lester

HOUSTON -- The Cubs homered five times in the first six innings Tuesday night at Minute Maid Park. That it still wasn’t enough to prevent a 9-6 loss to the Astros says plenty about what’s happening with this team at the moment.

Left-hander Jon Lester fought and clawed and searched for answers that never came during a tough 5 2/3 innings. He allowed seven earned runs, including the first of two Alex Bregman home runs.

• Box score

“I don’t really know,” Lester said. “The results are the results. You can’t really run away from those. I feel like the stuff was there. You can say you had good stuff and made good pitches. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day. It is what it is.”

At a time when the Cubs badly need innings from their starters, they’re not getting them. Cubs starters have an 8.50 ERA over the last seven games. In that time, they’ve completed six innings only twice.

“He didn’t look far off,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said of Lester, “but it was just a matter of not executing his pitches perfectly and just missing. He wasn’t complaining. They were balls. Tough night for him.”

In a small ballpark against a team that is masterful at getting the ball in the air, there’s little margin for error. Lester was hurt by two walks and a hit batsman that contributed to Astros rallies in the first and fourth innings.

“I just think hitters hit with a lot of confidence here,” Maddon said, “and maybe pitchers try to miss bats too much. I think Jon was probably trying to be too perfect.”

Lester’s seven earned runs are the most he has given up since a loss to the Nationals last Aug. 11. The Cubs gave him an early 3-1 lead on home runs by Jason Heyward, Addison Russell and David Bote in the second inning.

By the fourth inning, that lead was gone. Even when the Cubs rallied for a 6-6 tie in the sixth, their bullpen couldn’t hold it, and Bregman’s two-run home run off reliever Brad Brach got the lead back in the bottom of the sixth.

“I felt really good with Brach and the rest of that group,” Maddon said. “We were looking for him to be in that part of the lineup in the later part of the game, and the guy hits a home run. Those were our plans, and it didn’t work.”

Having spent nine seasons with the Red Sox, Lester knows better than almost anyone that, in some ballparks, executing pitches sometimes isn’t enough.

“That’s just the park,” he said. “You can’t use your surroundings as an excuse. You’ve just got to try and keep ‘em in the bigger part of the field. I’m just trying to execute pitches. I’m trying to get back to the feel that I want. I felt like I had that for the most part tonight.”

This is how the Cubs do offense lately. They hit home runs. They hit them in bunches. In his return to the lineup, Heyward opened the second inning by launching a home run over the left-field wall. Bote had the second two-homer game of his career, and Kyle Schwarber hit his ninth of the season to give the Cubs two back-to-back efforts in the game, following Bote in the sixth. That’s 21 home runs in the last seven games for the Cubs.

Having watched the rotation roll out quality starts during a 24-9 run to the top of the NL Central, the Cubs are confident that things will turn at some point soon.

“It’s a hard start to walk away with positives,” Lester said. “It’s a results-driven industry. I can’t sit here and lie to you guys that I feel good about that. Seven runs is seven runs. Just didn’t get the results.”