Expos’ Rout Makes the Race More Wild

The Montreal Expos are hanging in the National League wild-card race.

Livan Hernandez scattered eight hits in his league-leading seventh complete game, and Vladimir Guerrero drove in four runs to lead Montreal over the Philadelphia Phillies, 12-1, Monday night at Montreal.

Hernandez (14-7) struck out nine and walked one in his 30th career complete game, improving to 4-0 in five August starts.

“The team’s very excited about playing four games here against Philadelphia,” Hernandez said. “Everybody tried to play the best they can, and the team came in today and hit a lot.”

The Expos, who went 2-4 on a West Coast trip, drew within three games of Philadelphia and Florida in the NL wild-card race as they began a stretch of 13 consecutive games against those two rivals.

The Phillies dropped to 1-6 on a season-high, 13-game trip.

“As bad as we’re playing, as bad as we’re going, we’re tied for first in the wild card,” Phillie Manager Larry Bowa said.

Randy Wolf (12-9) gave up nine runs and six hits in 1 2/3 innings, the shortest of his 137 career starts. In his previous start, Wolf gave up seven runs over 4 1/3 innings in a 10-1 loss at Milwaukee.

“He’s struggling right now,” Bowa said. “No one feels worse than he does.”

The game drew 30,501, Montreal’s highest home attendance since May 24. The Expos offered $3.50 tickets and had a 70-cent hot dog promotion.

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Arizona 11, San Diego 8 -- Alex Cintron and Robby Hammock hit two-run homers for Arizona, and Luis Gonzalez and Matt Kata drove in two runs each to help the Diamondbacks win at Phoenix behind Randy Johnson.

Arizona moved to within 1 1/2 games of Philadelphia and Florida, tied for the wild-card lead.

Johnson (4-6) gave up four runs and eight hits in five innings and struck out four. He won after losing his last two starts, the first time that had happened since June 25 to July 10, 1999, when Arizona failed to score in four consecutive Johnson starts.

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Milwaukee 10, Cincinnati 6 -- Geoff Jenkins hit a two-run homer and Bill Hall homered and drove in three runs to help the Brewers win at Cincinnati for their seventh consecutive victory. It is Milwaukee’s longest winning streak since 1997. Hall had a career-high four hits, and Wes Helms and Mark Smith also homered.

Matt Kinney (9-9) gave up four runs and six hits in seven innings, struck out seven and walked none, improving to 3-1 in his last six starts.