Jose Abreu’s three homers lift White Sox past Cubs; winning streak at 7

Sure, these matchups against the Cubs mean a lot to the White Sox.

Ya think?

‘‘That is correct,’’ first baseman Jose Abreu said through a translator Saturday. ‘‘We take a lot of pride in these games. We know the importance that this game has for the city, for our fans. We always try to beat them, no matter what.’’

The Sox beat the Cubs 7-4, and Abreu beat the baseball into submission, launching three home runs a night after smashing two in a 10-1 victory. Luis Robert and Yasmani Grandal also went deep for the consecutive second night, giving the Sox (17-11) five for the game and 11 for the series with the finale yet to come Sunday.

The Sox have won seven games in a row and lead the majors with 54 homers.

‘‘Everyone in the league would like to have an offense like the one we have right now,’’ Abreu said.

Give Abreu credit for not being so caught up in his own baseball world that he can’t see a forest that is a world pandemic through the trees.

‘‘For the city, this is even more important, just because of the things we’ve been through,’’ he said. ‘‘We need these kind of games for the city, for the fans, for baseball.’’

When the Sox needed a run to break a tie, Abreu hammered an opposite-field homer against Kyle Hendricks leading off the sixth inning to give them a 3-2 lead.

He then added a two-run homer against Rowan Wick in the eighth to make it 5-2 and a solo shot against Duane Underwood Jr. in the ninth to make it 7-3. He now has 10 homers this season and 189 in his career, good for fifth place on the Sox’ all-time list, passing Magglio Ordonez.

Abreu (4-for-4, three runs scored, four RBI) also singled against Hendricks — against whom he is 9-for-16 in his career — to extend his hitting streak to seven. He has 27 RBI this season.

Abreu, who is in his seventh season, hasn’t played on a winning team with the Sox, but this is the deepest lineup he has been part of.

‘‘Every pitcher who faces us, he knows that we can do damage from one to nine,’’ Abreu said. ‘‘It’s not just because of me or the guys that I have around me. It’s the whole offense, the whole team we have.’’

Luis Robert’s two-run homer against Hendricks in the second got the train going, as it did the night before.

The Sox’ pitching hasn’t been bad, either. Entering the game, their starting pitchers had a 2.68 ERA in the last 22 games and their bullpen had produced a 0.50 ERA in the last six.

Right-hander Reynaldo Lopez returned from a sore shoulder to make his second start of the season. Besides hitting a batter and walking another before allowing a two-run double to Victor Caratini in the second, he wasn’t bad in 3 1/3 innings and 50 pitches. Lopez touched 97 mph with a strikeout of Kyle Schwarber, one of his four whiffs.

Gio Gonzalez, as planned, piggybacked on Lopez’s start and allowed one hit in 3 2/3 scoreless innings. Evan Marshall yielded a run in the eighth and Alex Colome in the ninth.

Abreu’s trio of homers marked the 16th time it was accomplished in Sox history.

Of passing Ordonez, he said: ‘‘You work hard every day to try to do good things, great things. . . . I don’t know for how long that’s going to last because we have Eloy Jimenez and Yoan Moncada here. That probably won’t last long.’’