Cubs' Rucinski takes perfecto into seventh

After his latest rough start, Drew Rucinski had enough confidence in himself not to make any major changes to his mechanics or game plan.

"Nothing crazy. I was just trying to get the ball in the zone more and down in the zone," he said. "Some of it is, something unlucky happens and then snowballs and then you make a bad pitch. You've got to bounce back strong, and that's what I was trying to do tonight."

It worked.

In his longest outing in almost two years, the 27-year-old right-hander took a perfect game into the seventh and ended up allowing a run on three hits and a walk while striking out three four in Triple-A Iowa's 6-1 win over Albuquerque on Friday night.

"[I was] getting ahead in the count," he said. "I was throwing my fastball and my cutter well, keeping the ball down and letting my defense do the work."

Rucinski (3-4) signed with the Cubs as a Minor League free agent last November, having pitched in the Angels system from 2013-15 and appearing in four big league games last year. He signed with the Indians as a non-drafted free agent out of Ohio State in 2011 but spent part of that year and the next two in independent ball. He hadn't thrown as many as eight innings since a nine-inning shutout for Double-A Arkansas on June 7, 2014. 

"There's definitely some frustration to it," Rucinski said after lowering his ERA to 5.93, "but that's baseball."

The frustration belonged to the Isotopes for much of Friday night. Rucinski set down the first 20 batters and said he knew he was in a groove by his second time through the lineup.

"I felt like I just needed to keep executing pitches," he said. "[Catcher Willson] Contreras was calling a great game -- it was a 1-0 game, so I did need to execute -- but I felt like I just had to execute whatever pitch he called."

Rucinski admitted that even before that, thoughts of a no-hitter or perfect game were creeping into his mind.

"Once you get past the fifth, it's always in there, like, 'Let's try to do this,'" he said.

Brandon Barnes became the Isotopes' first baserunner with two outs in the seventh when he hit a liner over the glove of leaping shortstop Kristopher Negron for a single.

"It's definitely frustrating to lose it, but it was just, 'Let's get back to work,'" Rucinski said. "Contreras came out, too, and he just kind of said, 'OK, let's get to it.'"

The native of Neenah, Wisconsin, surrendered an RBI double to Ben Paulsen but worked around a one-out walk to Tim Smalling and a single by Joey Wong to turn in a scoreless eighth. Rucinski threw 64 of 97 pitches for strikes and delivered a fourth-inning single that raised his batting average to .300 (3-for-10), despite not having logged a plate appearance since high school.

"That's the really exciting part," he said. "I haven't had a live at-bat in something like nine years, so I was definitely excited."

Contreras, the Cubs' second-ranked prospect also produced at the plate. His two-run homer in the seventh was his third in four games.

"Oh, that was great," Rucinski said. "That finally broke it open, gave us a little breathing room. It's really fun to watch him do that."

Tyler Anderson, the 2011 first-round pick who missed last season with a stress fracture in his elbow, allowed a run on five hits and two walks while striking out five over six innings in his Triple-A debut for the Isotopes.