The Cubs looked really good Saturday. Great pitching from Ben Brown, a huge day from Pete Crow-Armstrong, good relief, great defense…
As good as they looked Saturday, that’s how bad the team looked Sunday in a dispiriting 5-1 loss to the Cardinals.
You knew it probably wasn’t going to be the Cubs’ night after they got the first two hitters in the game on base and didn’t score. Nico Hoerner and Pete Crow-Armstrong singled to begin the night’s action and then… Alex Bregman struck out, Seiya Suzuki popped
up and Ian Happ struck out. If you’re keeping track that’s already 0-for-3 with RISP. (0-for-8 with RISP for the entire game, not that such things are anything new for this team.)
Then Jordan Wicks had a second start just like his first, getting hit hard in the first inning. He allowed hits to the first three Cardinals and by the time the inning was over, two runs had scored. So, improvement? Just two runs given up in the first instead of five, as he did in Pittsburgh?
Yes, I’m being sarcastic. Everyone could have gone home after that inning because the Cubs offense was largely absent. They had only five more hits the rest of the way, just two for extra bases — a double by Michael Conforto in the seventh, by which time the game was basically over, and a solo homer by Alex Bregman in the fifth.
By the time Bregman left the yard, the Cubs were already down 5-0. Three of the runs were off Wicks, who completed just two innings plus one batter’s worth of the third, a leadoff single by JJ Westerholt, who eventually scored. Three runs off Wicks in two innings and his ERA went DOWN, from 16.62 to 15.63. Yikes. I feel badly for Wicks, who does have talent, but who doesn’t seem to know how to harness it at the MLB level. It seems likely that at least one more start in that rotation slot replacing Edward Cabrera will be needed, and my recommendation (not that the team listens to me) would be for Javier Assad to be recalled to make that start and Wicks be sent back to Triple-A Iowa.
Two more runs scored in the Cardinals third off Ethan Roberts, who had a rare bad outing. At 5-0 the game appeared out of reach, but Bregman did put them on the board with this home run [VIDEO].
It was Bregman’s first home run since May 12, a span of 82 plate appearances. All five of Bregman’s home runs so far this year have come with no one on base. That’s not a criticism, it’s just a coincidence. Did you know that Bregman is on a 10-game hitting streak? True story. He’s batting .304/.373/.413 (14-for-46) during the streak with two doubles, a home run and six runs scored. So that’s… pretty good, I guess. Hopefully he can build on it.
After Roberts left the game, Trent Thornton, Phil Maton and Ryan Rolison combined to throw five one-hit innings, though they also issued four walks. Maton actually retired all three hitters he faced — baby steps, maybe. Maton’s only strikeout came after this ABS challenge [VIDEO].
Honestly, that’s about all I’ve got from this one. With Cabrera and Matthew Boyd (who had a good rehab outing Sunday) on the shelf and Jameson Taillon and Shōta Imanaga giving up home runs every time you look up, Cubs starting pitching is in tatters, and it’s shown in the results over the last week. The Cubs went 3-4 on the road trip, which wouldn’t have been terrible if they hadn’t lost eight straight games right before it.
Here are Craig Counsell’s postgame comments [VIDEO].
It was fun to hear Anthony Rizzo as a field reporter for a Cubs game, and Jim Deshaies and Jason Benetti had an easy rapport. NBC’s Sunday Night Baseball production is, in my view, vastly superior to ESPN’s. NBC focuses much more on the action on the field, and that’s the game I want to watch.
Silly fun fact about this game:
After an excellent 17-9 April, the Cubs went 13-16 in May. Let’s hope that’s the worst month of 2026. They trail the Brewers by five games in the NL Central and dropped into a third-place tie with the Pirates after Sunday’s loss. With 102 games remaining, that is certainly not an insurmountable lead. Perhaps coming back to Wrigley Field and a turn of the calendar page will get the Cubs back on a winning track.
The Cubs are off Monday, an off day they surely need after 10 straight games during which they went 3-7. They’ll open a three-game series against the Athletics at Wrigley Field Tuesday evening. Jameson Taillon will start for the Cubs and Gage Jump will go for the A’s. Game time Tuesday is 7:05 p.m. CT and TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network.
