Patrick Wisdom watched his long fly ball bounce off the hands of fans in the first row of the left-field bleachers to fall into the basket, and he let out a yell as he rounded first base.
He had just come off the bench in the sixth inning Tuesday to tie up a game the Cubs would go on to win 7-6 against the White Sox.
“I felt really good,” he said after the game. “Probably the most emotion I’ve showed in a while. Awesome to get the win too. That’s the cherry on top, is getting a nice win, especially against the White Sox.”
Cubs left-hander Shota Imanaga had a second consecutive rough start Tuesday, but this time, the offense pulled off a comeback. Imanaga allowed five runs, even though all but one were unearned, before the rain delay ended his outing with one out in the fifth.
It was the third time in his rookie season that rain had affected one of his scheduled starts. The first time it happened, Imanaga was four scoreless innings into a dominant start against the Dodgers before the weather prematurely brought out the bullpen.
The next time, rain wiped out his start in St. Louis altogether. In that instance, the Cubs moved Imanaga’s start back five days to a matchup against the Brewers in Milwaukee, where he threw the first clunker of his major-league career. He allowed as many runs in one start as he had the previous nine put together. That was last week.
When a 42-minute delay interrupted Imanaga’s start against the Sox in the middle of an at-bat — he was ahead 1-2 in the count against Luis Robert Jr. — there wasn’t as great a sense of loss. The inning before, the Sox had mounted a five-run rally against him, something that had been unheard of before last week.
It began with singles by Andrew Vaughn and Robert, although right fielder Cody Bellinger made a sliding stop to keep Vaughn from advancing to third and made it a close play at second.
Then Paul DeJong hit a chopper up the third-base line. Third baseman Christopher Morel tried to pick it backhanded on the short hop, but he missed the ball, and it rolled to the Cubs’ dugout, where shortstop Dansby Swanson picked it up.
One run scored, and the umpires called the ball out of play, awarding Robert and DeJong third and second base, respectively. They both scored when Imanaga left a four-seam fastball thigh-high to Korey Lee, who drove it to left field for a double.
Then Imanaga hung a splitter at about the same spot to Sosa, who sent it into the left-field stands.
By the time the rain chased the teams off the field the next inning, the Cubs trailed 5-0.
The offense that came back from the delay was ready to close that gap.
‘‘I believe in this group,’’ president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said before the game. ‘‘This group is a better offensive team than we’ve shown.’’
Ian Happ and Dansby Swanson doubled in the fifth to account for the Cubs’ first run. Then in the sixth, Morel and Wisdom launched two-run homers to tie the score, erasing the damage the Sox had done against Imanaga.
The White Sox re-took the lead the next inning, as Luis Robert Jr. hit a towering solo home run. But the Cubs pulled ahead for the first time, and for good in the eighth. With runners on first and second, Happ drove an inside fastball into the right field corner for a two-run double.
