PHILADELPHIA _ More than a month has passed since the Phillies traded for Asdrubal Cabrera because they thought he could add offense to their lineup.
On Friday night, Cabrera delivered.
Cabrera lined a solo home run to left-center field in the 10th inning to complete a 2-1 comeback victory over the Chicago Cubs. It was the fifth game-winning homer of Cabrera's career, the first since his infamous bat flip against Phillies reliever Edubray Ramos as a member of the New York Mets.
There were no such theatrics this time. Cabrera simply rounded the bases after launching a pitch from Cubs reliever Steve Cishek. But he was greeted at home plate by celebrating teammates, who couldn't possibly have known yet that the division-leading Atlanta Braves almost simultaneously lost at home to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
At the close of August, the Phillies are two games behind the Braves in the National League East. There are 28 games remaining in the season, including seven head-to-head matchups with Atlanta in the final 11 games.
Buckle up.
This series marks the first meeting between the Phillies and the NL-leading Cubs since early June in Chicago. And although the Phils dropped two of the three games at Wrigley Field, they played the Cubs almost evenly. They were outscored by only a 14-11 margin and continued to prove they could hang with the best teams in the league.
By now, there's no longer any questioning that point. All that remains unanswered is whether the Phillies can hang with them in the playoffs, too.
Phillies starter Nick Pivetta was almost constantly on the ropes for five innings. But the Cubs couldn't land a knockout punch, scoring only once on Javier Baez's solo homer in the fifth.
Otherwise, Pivetta stranded six baserunners. His biggest escape act came in the third inning when he struck out Anthony Rizzo and got Ben Zobrist to ground out to get out of a bases-loaded quagmire.
Cubs starter Jose Quintana, meanwhile, cruised for five innings. He retired 14 batters in a row at one point and didn't permit a baserunner between Wilson Ramos' two-out single in the first inning and Roman Quinn's one-out double in the sixth.
But Quinn's hit also helped enable the Phillies to both tie the game and get Quintana out of it at least one inning early. Cesar Hernandez drove in Quinn with an RBI single, and with Quintana due to bat in the seventh inning, Cubs manager Joe Maddon had to turn to a pinch-hitter even though Quintana threw only 88 pitches and matched his season total with two hits against Pivetta.
The Cubs had the first best chance to break the tie. They loaded the bases with two outs in the eighth inning against Seranthony Dominguez on a single, a throwing error by third baseman Maikel Franco and a walk. But Dominguez came back to strike out pinch-hitting Victor Caratini on three pitches to keep the game tied.
