CHICAGO (AP) \u2014 Joey Wiemer and Keibert Ruiz homered and the Washington Nationals earned a season-opening series win with a 6-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Jake Irvin (1-0) allowed two runs and three hits with seven strikeouts and a walk in five innings and Clayton Beeter, the last of four Washington relievers, worked a clean ninth for his first save. Washington took two of three in the series.<\/p>\n
Alex Bregman hit two solo home runs \u2014 his first since joining the Cubs as a free agent \u2014 and Ian Happ added one.<\/p>\n
Brady House and Daylen Lile hit consecutive two-out singles off Shota Imanaga (0-1) in the first and Wiemer followed with his second homer of the season to give Washington a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Imanaga also gave up Wiemer\u2019s leadoff triple in the fourth, but stranded him there with three straight outs. Wiemer was 3 for 3 with a walk.<\/p>\n
Ruiz added a two-run homer off reliever Hoby Milner in the eighth.<\/p>\n
Bregman, who signed a five-year, $175 million contract in January, hit a solo shot to center to start the fourth and Happ added his second of the season two pitches later to make it 3-2.<\/p>\n
Bregman added an eighth-inning solo shot to right field off Cionel P\u00e9rez.<\/p>\n
Imanaga was pulled after walking the leadoff man in the sixth. He gave up six hits and four runs while walking two and striking out seven.<\/p>\n
Winnipeg Jets forward Jonathan Toews, who captained the Chicago Blackhawks to three Stanley Cups, threw out the ceremonial first pitch.<\/p>\n
Nationals: at Phillies where Washington’s Foster Griffin faces Philadelphia’s Taijuan Walker on Monday.<\/p>\n
Cubs: host Angels. Ryan Johnson starts for Los Angeles against Chicago’s Edward Cabrera on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO (AP) \u2014 Joey Wiemer and Keibert Ruiz homered and the Washington Nationals earned a season-opening series win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2398],"tags":[72,5,138,83388,2280,4914,55398,12525,36,496,2603,83390,2101,4,415,9500,9501,9496,9497,39139,15187,39140,22860,7274,770,83389,1544,414,71,4222],"class_list":["post-651517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington-nationals","tag-alex-bregman","tag-baseball","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-cubs-washington-nationals-score","tag-clayton-beeter","tag-edward-cabrera","tag-foster-griffin","tag-hoby-milner","tag-ian-happ","tag-jake-irvin","tag-joey-wiemer","tag-jonathan-toews","tag-keibert-ruiz","tag-mlb","tag-nationals","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40779-ap-delaware-maryland-sports-only","tag-product-40784-ap-illinois-sports-only","tag-product-40818-ap-virginia-sports-only","tag-product-40819-ap-washington-dc-sports-only","tag-ryan-johnson","tag-shota-imanaga","tag-stanley-cups","tag-taijuan-walker","tag-washington","tag-washington-nationals","tag-washingtonnationals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}