Diamondbacks pummel Cubs into big loss

By The Associated Press

CHICAGO – Orlando Hudson hit home runs from both sides of the plate, including his first career grand slam, as the Arizona Diamondbacks hit a team-record six homers Monday night in a 15-4 victory over the Chicago Cubs.

Rookie Stephen Drew hit his first career home run, and Shawn Green, Chad Tracy and Eric Byrnes also went deep for the Diamondbacks, who had a season-high scoring total.

Earlier in the day, the Cubs traded 327-game winner Greg Maddux to the Los Angeles Dodgers for shortstop Cesar Izturis and sent infielder Todd Walker to San Diego for a minor league pitcher.

The Cubs plan to use Izturis at shortstop and move Ronny Cedeno to second.

Hudson homered left-handed with the bases loaded against Mark Prior (0-5) in the third inning, driving a 3-1 pitch just over the wall in left-center to make it 6-1.

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Hudson added a two-run shot from the right side in the seventh off Glendon Rusch. Drew, the No. 8 hitter, immediately followed with his homer to make it 10-3.

Prior also gave up solo homers to Green and Tracy. He lasted just five innings in his seventh start of the season, allowing six runs, six hits, and three walks while striking out five and hitting two batters.

Byrnes had a long solo shot off Rusch and a two-run double off Will Ohman.

Brandon Webb (12-4) gave up long homer to Aramis Ramirez, giving up four runs and eight hits in seven innings. He tied Carlos Zambrano and Jason Marquis for the NL lead in victories.

The Diamondbacks, just 1.5 games out of both the NL West and wild card lead coming in, didn’t make any moves at the deadline.

“We’re not going to mortgage a lot of the guys that we feel are going to be big parts of this thing going forward,” manager Bob Melvin said before the game.

Ramirez hit his team-high 24th homer in the third, sending a two-run homer off Webb onto Waveland Ave. to make it 6-3.