All year, the Cubs bullpen has been an impediment to winning, instead of being the pitchers who come into the game and nail down victories.
Never was this as evident as it was during the Cubs’ 9-4 loss to the Brewers Tuesday night at Wrigley Field. Daniel Palencia, Ryan Zeferjahn, Caleb Thielbar and Tyler Ferguson took a game the Cubs were leading 3-1 with one out in the sixth and turned into a 9-4 loss to the Brewers. If you’re counting — and maybe you shouldn’t — that’s six runs allowed in 3.2 innings,
including a pair of home runs.
Yikes. This won’t serve the team well in the postseason.
This game began well, though. It went scoreless through three innings, with Matthew Boyd facing the minimum thanks to a second-inning double play after a walk.
In the fourth, Jackson Chourio led off with a single for the Brewers and advanced to second on a single by Brice Turang. Carson Kelly then threw out Chourio trying to steal third [VIDEO].
The Cubs took the lead in the bottom of the fourth. Seiya Suzuki led off with a walk and took second on an infield single by Alex Bregman.
Tyrone Taylor doubled in both runners for a 2-0 lead [VIDEO].
Taylor then scored on this play, which was scored a hit for Nico Hoerner and a throwing error [VIDEO].
The Cubs led 3-0. Here’s what bothers me, though: The first four Cubs reached in that inning. Three runs score and there’s a runner on first — and the next three hitters went down in order. They had a chance for a really big inning and didn’t put the proverbial hammer down.
That wasn’t the worst thing that happened in this game, though.
The Brewers cut the lead to 3-1 in the fifth with three singles after their first two hitters were retired, one on this Swansonesque diving stop by Nico [VIDEO].
Still. The game is heading to the sixth with a two-run Cubs lead. Unfortunately, Boyd had run up a relatively high pitch count over the first five innings and it seemed clear he’d be done after six. The first two Brewers reached off Boyd in the sixth and after Boyd got Jake Bauers to pop up with runners on second and third, Boyd was replaced after 97 pitches by Daniel Palencia.
Craig Counsell has said that with the bullpen in flux, pitchers wouldn’t necessarily have specific roles, referring to them as “out-getters.”
Palencia was not that in this game. While facing Andrew Vaughn, Palencia balked in a run to make it 3-2. Here’s that balk [VIDEO].
Then Palencia gave up an RBI double to Vaughn and a two-run homer to Christian Yelich within the first six pitches he threw. Now it’s 5-3 Brewers and Boyd’s pitching line — three runs allowed in 5.1 innings — looks a lot worse than he actually pitched, with two of those runs scoring after he left the game.
Nevertheless, the Cubs did attempt a comeback in the bottom of the inning. With one out, Nico laid down a perfect bunt and went to second on a throwing error. Michael Busch blooped a ball into short left that fell untouched by three Brewers. It went for a double, with Nico stopping at third because he had to hold up to see if the ball would be caught.
This fielder’s choice by Kelly made it 5-4 [VIDEO].
B.J. Murray, just called up to the major leagues for the first time as rosters expanded Tuesday, then singled for his first MLB hit [VIDEO].
Murray, who is the first Cubs player ever to wear No. 83, received loud ovations during lineup introductions and after this hit. Congratulations to Murray for the hit; unfortunately, the Cubs did not score again in the inning, as Matt Shaw grounded out to end it.
Still — 5-4 going to the seventh, a chance remains, right?
Friends, you already know there was not a chance, and that was thanks to bad relief work by Zeferjahn, Thielbar and Ferguson, who allowed four more Brewers runs in the seventh and eighth, two of those runs on a homer by Joey Ortiz.
All of that seemed to shut the Cubs down. The last 10 Cubs (including Shaw in the sixth) went down in order, four by strikeout.
And Javier Assad continues to toil away at Triple-A Iowa.
I don’t know what the answer is here. It could be Assad. There’s brave talk from Jed Hoyer about maybe having Justin Steele, Edward Cabrera and/or Shelby Miller available later this month — more in this article by Meghan Montemurro in the Tribune. At this point there can’t be many relievers remaining — if any! — in Craig Counsell’s circle of trust.
Here are Counsell’s postgame comments [VIDEO].
“Exasperated” is the word I’d use to describe how the Cubs manager sounds in that clip. Can you blame him?
It got worse for the Cubs later in the evening when the Phillies defeated the Diamondbacks. That dropped the Cubs into the second wild card spot. They seem reasonably safe there, still five games ahead of the Padres, but as you can imagine, I don’t think the Cubs want to have to go to Philadelphia for a wild card series. There’s still plenty of time left to make up that one-game deficit but… better get to it.
One game fact from BCB’s JohnW53:
This was the 26th game of the season that the Cubs lost after holding a lead. They have lost the last six such games, after having won the previous five. They have won 23.
The Cubs have squandered a total of 58 leads in the 49 different games.
And if all this wasn’t bad enough, the five Cubs pitchers combined to throw 182 pitches, issued five walks, and the game ran a dreadful three hours, 18 minutes. Just imagine how long it might have run without the pitch timer.
Things won’t get any easier Wednesday evening at Wrigley Field as the Cubs will face Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski. David Peterson will start for the Cubs. Game time is again 6:40 p.m. CT and TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network (and MLB Network outside the Cubs and Brewers market territories).
