CHICAGO _ Joe Maddon has been thrilled with Cubs pitching and defense since the All-Star break.
But the manager had been waiting for the club's hitting to come around.
Consider it around.
Oh, and those other two things remain pretty good too.
The Cubs put it all together on a soggy Friday at Wrigley Field and pummeled the Mariners, 12-1, for the North Siders' third consecutive victory. The Cubs hit balls all over the park to provide a comfortable cushion for starter Jon Lester.
Jason Heyward homered and knocked in three runs, Anthony Rizzo drove in three and Chris Coghlan two to lead the way. Kris Bryant went 3-for-3 with an RBI, David Ross was 2-for-4 and homered to left and Javier Baez chipped in three hits as the Cubs battered Mariners starter Hisashi Iwakuma.
With Friday's offensive outburst _ their largest at home this season _ the Cubs have scored a combined 23 runs in their last three games. Heyward's fifth home run of the season was his first since June 11.
"It's in there," Maddon said of the offense. "It's the ebb and flow of the season. Sometimes it goes away. It was good to get it going (Friday). I was very pleased with our approach. I thought we did a great job getting to (Iwakuma)."
Meanwhile, Lester was brilliant with six shutout innings before rain halted the game for 1 hour, 14 minutes. The Cubs defense was errorless and has committed just two miscues in the 14 games since the break.
"Guys swung the bats really well," Lester said. "I try to always tell them, 'Twelve runs and airtight defense usually makes a pitcher's job a lot easier.' They delivered on that."
The Cubs torched Iwakuma for five runs over the first three innings with Coghlan's two-out, two-run single in the second and Heyward's long two-run homer in the third the big blows. The Cubs piled on against the Mariners bullpen and put up a six-spot in the sixth thanks in part to Rizzo's bases-clearing double and Ross' solo blast into the left-field bleachers.
"It just seemed like everybody contributed one way or another _ homers, doubles, walks," Coghlan said. "We can't be great every day but we make them earn it, and this afternoon I thought we did a great job of taking what (Iwakuma) gave us."
Lester (11-4) gave the Mariners very little. The veteran left-hander scattered four hits while walking two and striking out seven in six innings.
"I felt actually a lot better than I have here recently," Lester said. "Still two kind of pointless, useless walks in there, and I'm still trying to clean that up, but at the end of the day we win and that's what you want to do."
The Cubs have been doing quite a bit of winning since the break with a 9-5 mark.
"That time off gave us the rest that our staff needed to get back to the kind of staff that they are," said Ben Zobrist, who went 2-for-3 with two runs scored.
"Our hitters have struggled a little bit coning out of the All-Star Game, but it was a really good day to bust through with a lot of runs early. Hopefully, there are more games like that to come."
