Cubs' soft-tossing Davis frustrates Yanks

CHICAGO -- An opposing team's scout wasn't impressed with the pitcher the Cubs sent to the mound Friday afternoon against the Yankees. Referring to lefthander Doug Davis, he said, "He couldn't dent your car standing next to it."

But with a fastball that appeared to collapse from fatigue when it reached the plate, Davis was more than the Yankees could handle, pitching the Cubs to a 3-1 win in front of a sellout crowd of 42,219 at Wrigley Field.

Davis, 35, came in 0-5 with a 5.90 ERA, hadn't won since May 2010 and had WHIPs of 1.98 last year and 1.86 in 2011. But in holding the Yankees scoreless for seven innings, Davis allowed two ground-ball singles, one of which never left the infield.

Davis, who faced the Yankees for the first time since 2007, left to a standing ovation from the largest Wrigley Field crowd of the season after allowing Nick Swisher's double off the top of the leftfield wall with one out in the eighth. He wound up being charged with a run as Swisher scored on Mark Teixeira's two-out single off lefthander Sean Marshall, cutting the Yankees' deficit to 3-1.

But Carlos Marmol struck out Alex Rodriguez swinging to end the inning, and after allowing two runners to reach base in the ninth, he struck out pinch hitter Chris Dickerson to earn his 14th save.

Davis, whose fastball reached 85 mph only occasionally, allowed one run, three hits and three walks in 71/3 innings. He didn't allow a hit until Robinson Cano's two-out single up the middle in the fourth.

"Velocity is not the most important thing, location is the most important thing in this game, and movement," Joe Girardi said. "That's what [Davis] did today . . . He lived on the edges with an assortment of pitches."

"You're just not going to face a lot of guys like him," Teixeira said. "There's no pattern. You don't really know where the ball's going to go."

Rodriguez compared facing Davis to a knuckleballer. "He's one of those guys you have to really center the ball,'' he said, "and we didn't do that today."

The Cubs (29-40) had Freddy Garcia (5-6, 3.63) centered up nicely in the early innings, but Garcia -- who is similar to Davis in that he depends on a myriad of well-located pitches rather than throwing with power -- overcame his rough beginning. He allowed two runs in the first and one in the third, but that was it as he lasted seven innings.

"I started slow. They were sitting on my breaking pitch and slider," said Garcia, who retired 14 of his final 15 batters -- allowing only a bunt single by Tony Campana, who was caught stealing. "After the second, I started throwing my sinker more and settled down."

Garcia was the victim of some bad luck in the first. He walked leadoff man Kosuke Fukudome and 21-year-old shortstop phenom Starlin Castro sent a liner to left-center that resulted in three Yankees miscues. Curtis Granderson misread the ball off the bat and compounded the mistake by letting the ball get past him and into the ivy. His relay came in to shortstop Eduardo Nuñez, who, if he had thrown home, would have had a play on Fukodome. Nuñez instead threw to cutoff man Teixeira near the mound, and Fukodome scored to make it 1-0. Aramis Ramirez's single to right made it 2-0.

"It kind of stayed up longer than I thought it would," Granderson said. "Once I got to it, I was a little bit in between and it ended up shooting past me."

Castro doubled and scored on Ramirez's single in the third for a 3-0 lead.

"Definitely a great stadium, great atmosphere," Rodriguez said of the sunny, 67-degree afternoon in the Yankees' first visit here since 2003. "And a perfect day for the Cubs."