It ended more than 17½ hours after it began, but Ben Zobrist made the long wait pay off Wednesday when he singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 11th as the Cubs beat the Mets 2-1 in a game suspended by rain Tuesday night.
The Cubs extended their longest winning streak of the year to seven games and their lead in the division to 4½ games over second-place St. Louis – with one more game against the Mets to be played Wednesday afternoon.
The game was resumed after the teams played nine innings Tuesday on a night starting pitchers Jacob deGrom and Cole Hamels lived up to their marquee billing.
Hamels pitched five scoreless innings before he was lifted for a pinch-hitter after Albert Almora Jr. led off the bottom of the fifth with a single – lowering his ERA in six starts as a Cub to 0.69.
DeGrom, the league ERA leader and a Cy Young frontrunner, pitched eight innings, allowing only a run on David Bote’s sacrifice fly in the seventh. He also drove in the Mets’ only run, with a sharp grounder deep in the hole at short for an RBI single in the top of the seventh.
The winning rally opened with a rare walk to Javy Baez leading off. Victor Caratini then bunted to pitcher Paul Sewald, who overthrew first base as the runners took second and third.
Kyle Schwarber was intentionally walked to load the bases, and Sewald struck out Albert Almora Jr. for the first out.
With the switch-hitting Zobrist due up, the Mets brought left-hander Daniel Zamora from the bullpen to turn Zobrist around. And Zobrist turned it into the Cubs’ seventh walkoff win of the year.
