Timely home runs help Cubs end 10-game losing streak

PITTSBURGH — At last, the Cubs cracked the code.

Not with a password. Jhostynxon ‘‘The Password’’ Garcia plays for the Pirates.

Something much more basic: the timely home run.

Ian Happ broke a tie with a three-run home run, only the third three-run homer hit by the Cubs this month. Pinch hitter Michael Conforto followed two batters later with a two-run home run, the decisive blows in a six-run seventh that carried the Cubs to a 10-4 victory over the Pirates before 12,340 at PNC Park on Wednesday night.

The 10-game losing streak is over. The best chaser to whatever bitter taste might have been left behind? Happ suggested amnesia.

“Whatever has happened before this point, it doesn’t matter,’’ said Happ, clearly not a member of the “all past is prologue’’ crowd.

“It’s completely and totally irrelevant. Like, it doesn’t matter that we had two 10-game winning streaks and doesn’t matter that we had a 10-game losing streak. Doesn’t matter at all.

“So it’s behind us now. We’re moving forward, we’re four games above .500 and we’re in a good spot.’’

The Cubs are certainly in a much better place than when the day began, one baseball person describing the teamwide funk that had gripped the club as a “cluster of awfulness.”

Then someone flipped a switch, and awful quickly ceded the field to giddiness up and down the lineup. The Cubs banged out 14 hits, matching the 14 they put up the last time they won a game, 10-5 over the White Sox on May 15 at the Rate.

Manager Craig Counsell pointed at Pete Crow-Armstrong as the instigator. PCA refused to give in to the high-octane offerings of Pirates starter Bubba Chandler to draw a leadoff walk, fouling off six pitches in a 10-pitch at-bat that ended with him spitting on two pitches just below the zone.

“Just a great at-bat to lead off the game,’’ Counsell said. “From the pitcher’s perspective, you have a 10-pitch at-bat and [Crow-Armstrong] gets on base, you’re going to have a tough first inning. And then we made it a tough first inning.’’

Every spot in the lineup produced at least one hit, Michael Busch and Dansby Swanson reached base four times apiece and five players drove in at least a run, with Happ leading the way with a season-high five RBI. The first two came on a bases-loaded single in the first inning off Chandler, the last three when he crushed a first-pitch sweeper from Johan Ramirez that dawdled in the strike zone, driving it deep into the right-field seats.

Seiya Suzuki then lined a single off Ramirez, leading to his dismissal, and Conforto buried the first offering from Justin Lawrence deep into the right-field seats.

“It means a lot to add on,’’ said Conforto, who has two pinch-hit home runs, plus the top-of-the-ninth three-run home run in the Rate that nearly spoiled the Sox’ weekend. “The Pirates have been swinging the bat well, so we knew they had come back twice to tie the score, so we had to keep the pedal down.’’

Even on a team mired in a collective slump, Happ had stood out. In his previous seven games, interrupted by a two-day “mental refresher,” Happ had gone 2-for-27, striking out 13 times. But that doesn’t matter anymore. Or so he says.

“Honestly,’’ Busch said, “I think we just do such a good job of, no matter how the day went, just flushing it and moving on to the next.

“I think for us, just continuing to move forward. We know how good we are. We’ve just got to keep that one foot in front of the other.’’

Only a spoilsport would mention that all-world Paul Skenes is pitching Thursday for the Pirates.