Ted Lilly has located his strikeout pitch, and Alfonso Soriano has found his batting eye and power.

It was a strong combination Wednesday night, one that led the Chicago Cubs over the San Diego Padres 8-5.

Lilly fanned 11 in six innings to get his third straight win and Soriano had his second leadoff homer in as many nights.

“I don’t think I just stand out there and try to throw fastballs by guys,” said Lilly, who has consecutive double-digit strikeout games for the first time in his career.

“I have to mix my pitches and change speeds and locate the ball and things like that,” he said. “And at times, when I got my curveball going, I’m going to get some strikeouts on it. But I’m not going to say I’m a power pitcher.”

Backed by three RBIs apiece from Soriano and Geovany Soto, who also homered, Lilly (4-4) allowed four runs and six hits in six innings. After striking out 10 against Arizona in his previous start, he fanned eight in the first four innings. He left after throwing 102 pitches on a 46-degree night.

Cubs pitchers combined to strike out 15 against the Padres, whose 308 strikeouts are second in the major leagues behind Florida’s 326.

Soriano, who has three homers in as many games, is 10-for-19 over the last five games after a slow start that included a trip to the disabled list. He also had a key two-run single in the second inning after a wild pitch by Jake Peavy on a third strike to Lilly allowed the pitcher to reach. The single gave the Cubs a 3-0 lead.

“I feel great. I’m swinging the bat really well,” said Soriano, who was booed early in the 10-game homestand. “That’s part of the game. It motivates me to try to make myself a better player.”

Peavy (4-3) needed 87 pitches to make it through four innings. He gave up four runs and seven hits, struck out eight and walked two.

The wild pitch was costly.

“It would have been a different game. I still had the chance to make some pitches to Soriano there,” Peavy said. “I’d much rather get Ted Lilly out there than have to face Soriano, but I didn’t. I have to make better pitches. I’m obviously just frustrated. I have to do better than that. Having to get pulled after four is embarrassing.”

Carlos Quentin did what he does every day—checked the lineup card to see if he was playing. This time, he was batting third for the first time this season.

Quentin made White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen look smart when he broke an eighth-inning tie with his first career grand slam in Chicago’s 6-1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday night.

He also matched his career high with five RBIs and helped spoil John Lackey’s long-awaited return to the Angels’ rotation.

A.J. Pierzynski hit second—one of five players who batted in an unfamiliar slot for the first time this season. The others were Jim Thome (fifth), Paul Konerko (sixth) and Nick Swisher (eighth). Thome came in hitting .209, Konerko .213 and Swisher .206.

“You hit where you hit and you move on. I mean, you can’t really try to over think it,” Pierzynski said. “The two hole is probably the highest I’ve ever hit. It’s something different. Ozzie shook it up and it worked, so I’m sure we’ll probably have the same one tomorrow.”

Jered Weaver looked nothing like a pitcher who had a 7.02 ERA over his previous six starts.

Weaver allowed one hit over seven innings, combining with two relievers on a three-hitter, and Mike Napoli hit a tiebreaking sacrifice fly in the eighth to lead the Los Angeles Angels to a 2-0 victory over the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night.

“I just went out there and tried to pitch like the old Jered, and it came out all right,” Weaver said. “It was just adjustments with mechanics in the bullpen between starts. Me and (pitching coach Mike) Butcher were able to clean some stuff up.

“The arm strength’s coming along,” he added. “The more innings I get, the better my arm strength is going to get. That’s the way it’s always been. I always seem to get stronger as the season went along. I guess the six days rest kind of helped, too.”

Manager Mike Scioscia couldn’t have been more pleased with the right-hander’s dramatic turnaround.

“That’s the best stuff Jered’s had in two years,” Scioscia said. “He maintained it and he finished strong. His pitch count got a little high, but the last couple of innings he regrouped and finished hitters off better. You can’t throw the ball much better than Weave did tonight. It’s very encouraging.”

A.J. Pierzynski’s leadoff single in the fifth was the only hit off Weaver, who pitched seven innings. He struck out six and walked one, coming out of the game after 109 pitches. He came in 1-4 since pitching seven scoreless innings of three-hit ball in a 2-1 win over Texas on April 5.

“He just missed our bats,” Jermaine Dye said. “I mean, he threw a lot of breaking pitches, a lot of changeups in hitter’s counts, and was able to get ground balls and flyballs.”

Chicago starter John Danks had a hard-luck no-decision, although he had to work hard for it. Pitching against the Angels for the first time in his career, he scattered seven hits and two walks over 6 1-3 innings, struck out five and never retired the side in order.

Danks departed with one out and the bases loaded in the seventh after walking Gary Matthews Jr. with his 99th and final pitch. Octavio Dotel struck out Erick Aybar and Vladimir Guerrero to escape the jam.

But Dotel (1-2) gave up a leadoff single in the eighth to Torii Hunter, who took third when Garret Anderson got the green light on a 3-0 pitch from Matt Thornton and singled to right field. Napoli’s delivered Hunter with a flyout to center, with Anderson alertly tagging up, and Robb Quinlan drove in the second run with a two-out single against Scott Linebrink.

Scot Shields (2-0) pitched one inning for the win and Francisco Rodriguez got three outs for his major league-leading 16th save.

The Angels stranded a runner in scoring position in four of the first five innings. Hunter grounded out with a man on third base to end the first, Guerrero hit into a double play to end the third, Casey Kotchman flied out to end the fourth, and Aybar grounded out to end the fifth.

“We left way too many runners in scoring position,” Scioscia said. “We stranded a lot of guys and were 1-for-12 with guys in scoring position. So it was a night we needed to pitch well, and we did. We scratched out a couple of runs late and held on.”

Chicago manager Ozzie Guillen flip-flopped Paul Konerko and Dye in his lineup, dropping the slumping Konerko to fifth and putting Dye in the cleanup spot for the fourth time this season following his four-hit performance on Monday night. But they didn’t get a runner past first base until Carlos Quentin doubled off the center fence with one out in the ninth.

“We haven’t been scoring too many runs lately, but our pitchers have been going out there and giving us a chance,” Dye said. “We just have to try and bear down a little bit more and get some runs across for them early.”

Carlos Zambrano switched to longer sleeves after three innings, not so much to combat the cold—as would be expected—but to cover a scab on his pitching arm.

Big Z was plenty ready for the elements on a 41-degree night in mid-May and showed his sense of humor Monday night after pitching and batting the Chicago Cubs to a 12-3 win over the San Diego Padres.

“It’s OK for me. I’m from Alaska,” Zambrano said, drawing laughs at his postgame news conference.

“No, it’s tough man, especially for me. I’m from South America, Venezuela. It is not this cold. Not even close,” he said.

“As a starting pitcher … don’t worry about the cold factor, just try to hit your spots and try to do the best you can to keep the inning quick.”

But the Cubs made sure the Padres couldn’t get off the field soon enough, scoring six runs in the fifth—started by Zambrano’s double—and adding five more in the sixth, when he added a single. They had 13 hits and made the most of nine walks issued by the Padres.

Pitching with an extra day’s rest after his start Sunday was scratched because of rainy conditions, Zambrano (6-1) allowed six hits and three runs in seven innings. And he was part of a batting order that was on base all night.

“I think we have a very good lineup, very balanced,” said Alfonso Soriano, who homered in the fifth and is 7-for-14 during the Cubs’ four-game winning streak. “Be more aggressive and, at the same time, selective at home plate. That’s what I try to do because I know when I swing at a strike, I know that I hit the ball very hard.”

The Cubs’ first eight batters reached in the fifth on six hits and two walks. Randy Wolf (2-3) didn’t retire a batter in the inning and in four-plus innings, he gave up eight hits, seven runs and five walks.

“In the fifth inning, there is really no way to candy coat it,” Wolf said. “I was bad. I didn’t make the pitches I needed to. They capitalized on it. You get behind and you don’t locate. Those are two recipes for something bad to happen.”

Jody Gerut’s first homer in nearly three years gave the Padres a 2-1 lead in the top of the fifth, but the Cubs quickly responded.

Zambrano drove a ball off the wall in right-center for a leadoff double and Soriano followed with a drive to left-center that just cleared the fence for his fourth homer, putting Chicago up 3-2.

Ryan Theriot walked, Derrek Lee singled and Aramis Ramirez had an RBI single before Kosuke Fukudome worked a walk to load the bases. Geovany Soto’s two-run single through the middle made it 6-2 and finished Wolf. Mark DeRosa then greeted reliever Sean Henn with an RBI single.

“He couldn’t make a pitch to get himself out of it,” Padres manager Bud Black said of Wolf.

In the sixth, the Cubs batted around again. They loaded the bases for the third time in the game on Soriano’s double and walks to Theriot and Ramirez before Fukudome drew his third walk of the game to force in a run.

It got worse for the Padres, who have the worst record in the majors at 14-25.

When DeRosa hit a grounder to third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff, he tried to race to the bag for a force, but Ramirez beat him there. Kouzmanoff then threw wildly to first for an error and three runs ended up scoring on the play as the Cubs went up 11-2. Reed Johnson later added an RBI single.

Fukudome’s three walks were a big part of the Cubs’ offense.

“The guy knows how to play baseball,” Zambrano said. “He came to the U.S. ready to play. One thing I see in Fukudome is he can handle it with all the media and all the fans.”

Lee’s double into the right-field corner scored Theriot, who singled, in the first to put the Cubs ahead 1-0. Tadahito Iguchi hit an RBI single in the third to tie it.

Daryle Ward was so sure he would play in the majors that he practiced his signature as a kid. He may get a few autograph requests after his latest big hit.

Ward delivered a pinch-hit, two-run double in the eighth inning, and the Chicago Cubs rallied again to beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-4 Sunday after the anticipated showdown between Carlos Zambrano and Randy Johnson got wiped out.

“I love the game of baseball,” Ward said. “It’s something I knew that I was going to do when I was about 3 years old.”

Carlos Marmol (1-0) struck out two in a perfect eighth and Kerry Wood pitched the ninth to earn his seventh save in 10 chances and finish off Chicago’s three-game sweep of the NL West leaders.

Heavy rain and temperatures in the mid-40s delayed the start of the game by 58 minutes, and Zambrano and Johnson were spectators when it finally began. By the time the game ended, the Cubs had used another late rally to beat Arizona, the team that swept them in the playoffs last year.

Reed Johnson tied it at 4 with a two-run homer off Juan Cruz with one out in the seventh after Mike Fontenot walked. Cruz then walked Ryan Theriot before Tony Pena (0-1) got Derrek Lee to hit into a double play, but the Cubs struck again in the eighth.

Pena intentionally walked pinch-hitter Alfonso Soriano to load the bases with one out and set the stage for Ward, who drove the ball to right-center to make it 6-4.

“Well, I’m not going to let Soriano beat us right there,” Arizona manager Bob Melvin said. “We’ve got to have a chance for a double-play ball and we’ve got (Ward) hitting (.174) up there. That’s really not that tough of a decision.”

Ward also tied it with a pinch-hit RBI single in Chicago’s 7-2 victory over Arizona on Saturday.

Most days, Ward follows a heavy regimen of stretches and massages in case he gets called.

“Sometimes, you’re a little bit lazy and say, ‘I don’t want to do it,”’ said Ward, third among active players with 74 pinch hits. “But you have to. I feel like I’m making a good example for some of the younger guys that are playing on the bench. They do some of the same things I do, and it’s been working for all of us.”

It’s a lot of effort for about a minute of activity.

“Was it even a minute?” he asked on Sunday.

No one was sure, exactly. They just knew his timing was perfect, as was Reed Johnson’s.

Stuck in a 4-for-34 slump over the previous 11 games, he drove his first homer through a driving wind about halfway up the bleachers.

“The last week or so, we really haven’t been playing that well so I think this was a good confidence boost,” said Johnson, signed to a one-year deal in late March after Toronto released him.

Arizona’s Edgar Gonzalez was in line to get the win until Johnson went deep.

Recently booted from the rotation, Gonzalez allowed two runs and five hits before being lifted for a pinch hitter in the sixth. One of those hits was a solo homer by Lee that gave Chicago a 2-1 lead in the third.

Cubs starter Sean Gallagher carried the lead into the fifth but couldn’t make it out of the inning. Reliever Chad Fox wasn’t much help, either, walking in two runs that inning.

Gallagher allowed four runs and five hits over 4 1-3 innings in his first major league start and likely will get another one against Pittsburgh this week. The 22-year-old right-hander had made two appearances this season after posting an 8.59 ERA in eight relief outings while splitting time between the majors and minors last year.

If the Cubs caught a break by missing Randy Johnson, who’s 12-0 against them, it was tough to tell.

Lee’s homer aside, they did little against Gonzalez.

“He did a pretty good job of keeping the ball down and got a lot of groundballs,” Arizona catcher Miguel Montero said. “He got ahead in the count, which I thought was a big key for him.”