1st wins for Quade, Coleman as Cubs top Nats 9-1

[August 24, 2010]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Mike Quade got his first major league win, and so did Casey Coleman. The post-Piniella Chicago Cubs are off to quite a start.

Coleman, a rookie right-hander, took a one-hitter into the seventh inning, and Cubs interim manager Quade had a successful debut Monday night in a 9-1 victory over the Washington Nationals.

Making his second start and sixth major league appearance, Coleman (1-1) allowed one run and three hits with three strikeouts and two walks. He faced only three batters above the minimum until the seventh, when he gave up consecutive hits followed by Ivan Rodridguez's RBI groundout. Coleman collected his first major league hit, a single punched through a drawn-in infield in the fifth that also produced his first RBI.

Quade was promoted from third base coach following the sudden resignation of Lou Piniella, whose last game was Sunday. Quade, who considers the rest of the season an audition for the permanent job, inherited a club that started the day 23 games below .500 and that had lost six of its previous seven, but his debut produced Chicago's first comfortable victory in nearly three weeks.

The Cubs scored five runs in the third inning and two more in the fifth against Livan Hernandez (8-9), who was left to toil for 121 pitches until he was finally removed with one out in the fifth. The third inning included a leadoff home run by Blake DeWitt, two hit batters, one walk, a two-run single by Tyler Colvin and a two-run bloop triple by Alfonso Soriano that landed just inside the line and barely out of reach of sprawled outfielder Willie Harris.

Eight players had a least one hit -- and DeWitt and Xavier Nady led the way with three each -- for the Cubs, who hadn't won a game by more than two runs since a 15-4 rout of Milwaukee on Aug. 4.

Andrew Cashner replaced Coleman in the seventh and got out of the inning with a 1-6-3 double play. Cashner worked a 1-2-3 eighth, and Thomas Diamond did the same in the ninth.

The day was another long one for a Nationals team that was coming off two shutout losses in a three-game series with Philadelphia. Before Monday's game, the team announced that rookie ace Stephen Strasburg will be placed on the 15-day disabled list and will undergo a second MRI on a strained tendon in his right forearm.

NOTES: Cubs CF Marlon Byrd was hit on the right wrist by Hernandez in the third inning. He stayed in the game to run the bases but was removed in the bottom of the inning. X-rays were negative, and Byrd is day to day. ... In a pregame ceremony, the Nationals unveiled a plaque featuring Piniella on a Washington Senators rookie baseball card from 1964. The Senators drafted Piniella in 1962, but he never played for the franchise. The plaque will be given to Piniella. ... The Nationals announced they are renewing their affiliation with the Double-A Harrisburg Senators for two more years.

[Associated Press; By JOSEPH WHITE]

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