Defeating the St. Louis Cardinals is always nice from the Cubs’ point of view, and the three-game sweep completed Sunday with a 2-0 shutout win (the Cubs’ 15th shutout of the year) was particularly gratifying.
First, just because. But also because they got good pitching out of Javier Assad (5.1 shutout innings, six strikeouts) and three nice frames from Jordan Wicks, who had a rough year overall but ended it well and posted his first big-league save.
Assad and Cardinals opener Kyle Leahy matched zeroes for the first three innings, and Assad continued through five. Then the Cubs got on the board in the fifth on a leadoff homer from Seiya Suzuki, his 32nd [VIDEO].
For Suzuki, after a very long home-run drought, he’s now hit five in his last four games. It’s just the right time for him (and for Pete Crow-Armstrong, who was 1-for-3 Sunday) to start hitting again. For the Cubs, regarding home runs this year, from BCB’s JohnW53:
Seiya Suzuki’s fifth-inning home run was the Cubs’ 223rd, tying the 2017 team for third most in a season in franchise history. They hit 235 in 2004 and 256 in 2019.
Assad was removed after 79 pitches with one out in the sixth. It was a really good outing, bringing hope for him for 2026 (he obviously won’t be on the Wild Card roster). From John:
This is the 20th game of the season, roughly one of every eight, in which a Cubs starter did not allow a run while pitching at least 5.1 innings.
6: Cade Horton
5: Matthew Boyd
3: Ben Brown
2: Colin Rea
1: Javier Assad, Shota Imanga, Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon
Michael Soroka finished the sixth inning uneventfully and then Wicks entered and had a scoreless seventh before the Cubs posted an insurance run in the bottom of the inning. Kevin Alcántara, who had replaced Ian Happ in left field in the fifth, led off with a single and took second on a passed ball.
With two out, Moisés Ballesteros singled in Alcántara [VIDEO].
Wicks finished up, allowing three hits and no runs in his three-inning stint, throwing 41 pitches (32 strikes). No question, Wicks has talent and just turned 26. He could be a useful part of the 2026 Cubs pitching staff.
Here’s the final out of the Cubs’ 2025 regular season [VIDEO].
The Cubs thus finish 92-70, nine wins more than last year, and this was their 50th home win (50-29 at Wrigley Field, two “home” losses in the Tokyo Dome). It’s the first time the Cubs have had 50 home wins since 2019, when they were 51-30 at Wrigley Field.
A few more notes on this season-ending win from John:
Cubs pitchers walked one batter, for a season total of 405. That is their fewest in a full season in 57 years, since they had 392 in 1968. They had 407 in 2015.
In their 92 wins, the Cubs outscored their opponents by 384 runs, an average of 4.17. They have had a larger margin in their wins in only two seasons of the Modern Era: 4.33, in 2023, and 4.30, in 1970. They won by 4.15 in 1929, 4.11 in 2019, 4.10 in 2016 and 4.00 in 1935 and 2017.The Cubs won 25 games this year by one run. In their 67 other wins, their average margin was 5.36 runs.
The Cubs had shut out their opponent in the final game of the regular season only six times before, and not in nearly three quarters of a century:
1877: at home vs. Louisville, 4-0
1892: at St. Louis, 1-0
1919: at Cincinnati, 2-0
1921: at Cincinnati, 7-0
1947: at home vs. Cardinals, 3-0
1952: at St. Louis, 3-0
Attendance watch: The announced crowd of 37.497 brought the Cubs’ total of tickets sold in 2025 to 3,017,983, the first time they’ve had three million tickets sold since 2019. Most of the crowd was in a festive mood, with beautiful weather and the game not meaning anything. Almost everyone stayed until the end. And if you didn’t see this earlier, Sunday was the day that bleacher regulars have a potluck lunch. It’s the 12th year for this event, and dozens of folks (myself included) brought food:
This is the sort of community I’m proud to be a part of in the bleachers. In addition to everyone who brought food, all the gameday staff who make the ballpark such a great place to be were invited to partake of the enormous amount of food brought in.
And so, now the postseason fun begins. The Cubs will host the Padres for a best-of-three Wild Card Series beginning, as you know from this BCB post, Tuesday afternoon at 2:08 p.m. CT at Wrigley Field. TV coverage for at least the first two games of this series will be on ABC-TV — check local listings for the channel in your area (that’s WLS-ABC7 in Chicago). No starting pitchers have been officially announced for Game 1, yet. It’s widely assumed that Matthew Boyd would be on target to go on Tuesday, but according to this, the Cubs might wind up using an opener for Boyd:
It’s really not a bad idea, actually, especially since the Padres’ two top power hitters (Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado) both hit right-handed. The Cubs could do the same with Shōta Imanaga for Game 2. It seems likely that if there’s a Game 3, it would be started by Jameson Taillon.
This San Diego Union-Tribune article says that Nick Pivetta will start Game 1 and Dylan Cease Game 2. Pivetta has been the Padres’ best pitcher this year, and Cease hasn’t thrown well recently. If there’s a Game 3, it might be Yu Darvish for San Diego. As always, we await developments.
Can’t wait for Tuesday. How about you?
