PITTSBURGH – Thanks to a rule change, Alfonso Soriano’s hitting and Jason Marquis’ pitching, the Chicago Cubs needed only 12 innings to get two wins in one day.

Marquis limited the Pirates to four hits over eight innings to win his fourth consecutive start and Soriano homered for the second time in two days after not connecting all season, leading Chicago to a 7-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday.

A half hour before that game started, the Cubs completed an 8-6 win in a game suspended by a persistent rain with Chicago ahead 6-5 in the middle of the seventh Tuesday night. Soriano, the $136 million free agent, led off that game with his first Cubs homer and Cliff Floyd’s two-run shot off Jonah Bayliss (2-2) keyed a four-run rally just before the rain came.

Chicago manager Lou Piniella has been expecting Soriano to break out, and he did so in a big way in Pittsburgh. Soriano was 8-for-15 in the three-game series with homers in each of the final two games, including a go-ahead drive Wednesday in the third inning off Ian Snell (2-2) that made it 2-1.

Derrek Lee also doubled in a run during the first, his eighth consecutive game with a double, and had six hits in the final two games of the series.

The Cubs took advantage of Snell’s wildness to score two runs in the fifth and open a 4-1 lead without needing to put a ball in play. Snell walked four, hit Floyd with a pitch to force in a run and threw a run-scoring wild pitch. Floyd left the game after being struck with the pitch below his right knee, but he did not appear to be injured.

Ryan Theriot doubled twice and drove in two runs, not that Marquis (4-1) needed a lot of support. He struck out five and walked none – compared to Snell’s four walks – and was touched only for Ryan Doumit’s two-out solo homer in the second. Marquis lowered his ERA to 2.09.

In the suspended game, Rocky Cherry (1-1) got two outs in the sixth for his first career victory and Ryan Dempster finished up by getting four outs for his fifth save in five opportunities, despite allowing a run.

Lee had four hits, including two doubles and a run-scoring single, and Jacque Jones also homered.

The Cubs benefited from a change in baseball’s suspension rules made after last season. Under the former rule, the Pirates would have won 5-2 on Tuesday because they hadn’t batted in the seventh and the score would have reverted to the last completed inning – nullifying the Cubs’ four-run seventh. Now, play is picked up at the point where a suspended game is stopped.

Notes: Marquis is 2-1 with a 1.23 ERA against Pittsburgh in three starts the last two seasons, two with St. Louis last year. … Lee has doubled in eight consecutive games. … Soriano has a 12-game hitting streak, Lee an 11-game streak.

AP-ES-05-02-07 1659EDT