Jordan Wicks pitches 'wonderful game,' makes key adjustment as Cubs beat Astros

Erin Hooley/AP Photos

Cubs left-hander Jordan Wicks capped his final inning Tuesday with a two-pitch out.

He had battled deeper into counts with Astros stars Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman to get two-thirds of the way through the sixth inning. Then he went at Yainer Diaz with a second-pitch fastball in the strike zone.

Wicks induced Diaz to fly out and then strode toward the dugout, his best start of the season complete.

‘‘I think it was just being on attack from the go,’’ Wicks said after the Cubs’ 7-2 victory. ‘‘I felt like we really attacked to our spots well tonight.’’

Wicks pitched six innings and didn’t issue a walk — both firsts for him this season. He limited the Astros to two runs.

‘‘What’s clear for me in this stretch is that we’re going to have to push our starting pitching a little farther in games,’’ manager Craig Counsell said before the game, which opened a stretch of 16 games in as many days.

Leading up to his latest outing, going deep into games had been a challenge for Wicks. Paradoxically, a large part of that was connected to improvements he has made in the last year.

Wicks came into the season with more swing-and-miss stuff. The trick for him will be figuring out how to adjust his plan of attack to his upgraded arsenal.

‘‘The downside of when people don’t put pitches into play as weak-contact outs is the at-bat keeps going, and you still have to make more pitches to him,’’ assistant pitching coach Daniel Moskos told the Sun-Times before the game. ‘‘It’s an interesting turn of events.’’

Wicks focused during the winter on cleaning up his delivery. Plus, he settled on a grip for his slider and undid the damage that throwing a tacky ball in Double-A had done to that pitch.

‘‘We saw that last year, his leg kick was kind of getting out away from him and kind of pulling him down the slope a little early, messing with his timing, not allowing him to stay behind the ball as well,’’ Moskos said. ‘‘I think that’s in a really, really good place.’’

In the long run, the Cubs expect those strides to work to Wicks’ advantage. The whiff rates on his four-seam fastball, changeup and slider, in particular, have made big jumps.

The coaching staff has talked with Wicks about how to improve his efficiency, picking spots to pitch to weak contact rather than chasing strikeouts. Moskos complimented Wicks for how he has absorbed the conversations.

‘‘He’s always come from a good place of really strong understanding of what he does, what he needs to do to perform well, really receptive to everything that we give,’’ Moskos said. ‘‘I think he’s in a place where you could see him turn the corner, hopefully pretty soon.’’

Right on cue, Wicks did just that.

The Cubs’ offense gave him an early lead to work with. They scored five runs in the first on a two-run home run by Cody Bellinger and a three-run shot by Mike Tauchman, who added a second homer in the eighth for the second multihomer game of his career.

Even though Wicks was more aggressive in the strike zone, he allowed only one hit — a single — through the first three innings.

In the fourth, a pair of doubles to center by Tucker and Diaz gave the Astros their first run. But those came with an asterisk. Bellinger lost the first in the twilight, then jumped into the bricks on the second, with the ball hitting the wall as he tried to control it.

Bellinger left the game three innings later with bruising on his right side, the Cubs said. His X-rays came back negative, and he described it as a ‘‘dull pain’’ after the game, which he took as a ‘‘good sign.’’

The only other run Wicks allowed was a first-pitch homer by No. 9 hitter Jake Meyers in the fifth.

‘‘He pitched a wonderful game,’’ Counsell said.