There are times during a baseball season when, no matter how good your team is or how well they’ve played, they run into a good starting pitcher who just shuts them down.
That’s what happened Friday evening in Pittsburgh, when Pirates righthander Mitch Keller didn’t give the Cubs much of anything. Keller allowed just four hits and a walk over eight shutout innings, striking out six. He threw 93 pitches (64 strikes) and just two Cubs hitters got past first base off him: a double by Ian Happ in the fourth, and Seiya Suzuki, who singled with one out in the fifth, went to second when Yan Gomes was hit by a pitch with two out.