The Cubs love winning 8-7 games in extra innings after a rain delay.

They did it again Tuesday night, outlasting the pesky Pirates in 11 innings in a wild contest that featured just about everything you could ask for in a baseball game.

The Cubs jumped out in front right away on Ian Happ’s leadoff homer and built a 6-1 lead after 5 innings of play. But the Pirates put up a 4-spot in the bottom of the 6th inning and then, after a 71-minute rain delay, tied the game on Ke’Bryan Hayes’ homer in his first MLB game.

Each team added a run in the 10th inning and the Cubs took the lead in the 11th on Happ’s 3rd hit of the game to drive home Nico Hoerner. In the home half of the inning, Jeremy Jeffress kept the free Pirates runner at second base to end the game and give the Cubs a big victory.

The Cubs have mostly been traveling to cities on the day of games instead of the night before in an effort to try to reduce the risk of the virus on the road, so they flew to Pittsburgh early Tuesday morning, making for a very long day overall.

“The real credit here should go to these guy that woke up at 7 o’clock this morning for an 8 o’clock bus,” David Ross said. “That’s not gonna be in any kind of scorebook or any stat. These guys had a really long day and the fact they fought to the end and came out to win that game — scoring lots of runs and overcoming some adversity and a rain delay. It was just a long day. That’s a character win for me.”

Happ said he got up at 6:45 a.m. Tuesday morning and sat at the Cubs Zoom microphone at right around Midnight Chicago time.

“Been awake for a while,” Happ said. “It’s easy to let [that game] get away from you when things go sideways in the middle with the rain delay, with that homer coming back right after, when it’s still pouring out there. There’s a lot of factors in that game. We had some really nice pitching performances there late in extras to keep that thing close. For us to be able to grind through that and get a win, that was huge.”

The Cubs may be on the road at the moment, but they’ve made sure to pay their power bill. Happ’s homer coupled with Kyle Schwarber’s blast gives the North Siders 20 longballs in the first eight games of the three-city road trip, with Happ and Schwarber combining for nearly half of those (9). 

NOTES

—Kris Bryant returned to the Cubs lineup for the first time in more than two weeks and went 2-for-6 with a run scored on some great baserunning:

It feels like when it comes to Kris Bryant, ALL people EVER want to talk about is his bat.
Or his EYES. Or his SMILE.
Or his versatility on defense, his accolades, his adorable family, his Netflix queue.

But we don’t talk enough about his legs. @KrisBryant_23 has great legs. pic.twitter.com/P86ymrgFBu

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) September 2, 2020

—Jon Lester started the game and was charged with 5 runs on 8 hits and 3 walks over 5.1 innings.

—All three of the new (active) Cubs made their debuts Tuesday night. José Martínez started at DH and went 0-for-3 before giving way to Victor Caratini. Cameron Maybin entered as a pinch runner in place of Caratini in the 10th and stole a base. Josh Osich came out of the bullpen to help avoid a jam in the 9th inning and got 3 big outs in the ballgame.

—The Cubs are now 4-4 on this three-city road trip with another pair of games in Pittsburgh before returning home.