After waiting since Saturday to play baseball. the Cubs had themselves an eventful game in the opener of a four-game series against the Mets at Citi Field.
The Cubs won the game 9-6 (and the game wasn’t really that close), but now have apparently lost starter Edward Cabrera for an extended period due to a leg injury suffered while covering first base.
I’ll get to that, but let’s begin at the beginning.
After a quiet first inning, the Cubs put five on the board in the second. Seiya Suzuki walked, Ian
Happ singled and Matt Shaw was hit by a pitch. Bases loaded, nobody out. Now I know what you’re thinking here: “In what soul-crushing yet entertaining fashion will they fail to score in this situation?”
Friends, the Cubs did a lot better than that in this inning. After Nico Hoerner struck out, Carson Kelly drew a bases-loaded walk to make it 1-0. Dansby Swanson followed with this sacrifice fly [VIDEO].
Pete Crow-Armstrong was next. Boom! It’s 5-0 [VIDEO].
If you’re counting, the five runs scored over a span of just seven pitches. Efficient!
For PCA, that was his 17th home run of the year, his sixth in his last eight games, and his 10th in June (with eight games remaining).
Edward Cabrera had a rough second inning in which he threw 40 (!) pitches and gave two of the five runs back to the Mets. It could have been worse, as the Mets had the bases loaded with two out and Bo Bichette at the plate. Cabrera struck out Bichette to end the inning.
The Cubs got those two runs back in the fourth. With one out, Kelly walked and Swanson hit his ninth home run of the season [VIDEO].
Swanson is showing signs of coming out of his horrific slump. Last four games: .429/.500/1.000 (6-for-14) with two doubles, two home runs — and NO strikeouts. Let’s hope this continues.
The game was still at 7-2 Cubs going to the bottom of the fifth. With Cabrera over 90 pitches it was pretty clear he’d be lifted after five innings. With two out and two on, this happened [VIDEO].
That was Cabrera’s 99th pitch of the game. He stretched to take Nico’s throw and this was the result:
I’m pretty sure we all knew that about the pitching staff. That injury looked pretty bad — I’d think this will put Cabrera out at least a month, perhaps more. So, once Matthew Boyd returns to the rotation, Colin Rea will have to step up yet again. And this makes Jed Hoyer’s quest to find a starter by trade even more urgent.
That’s a topic for another time, though. Back to the game: Phil Maton was touched up for a Mets run in the seventh, but the Cubs put two more on the board in the eighth. Matt Shaw singled with one out but was picked off (after a review). Hoerner then doubled, and that was followed by a Kelly double to make it 8-3 [VIDEO].
Swanson then had his second extra-base hit of the game, a double, that made it 9-3 [VIDEO].
With a six-run lead in the ninth, Craig Counsell turned to newcomer Jaylen Murray and it did not go well. Murray threw 26 pitches and allowed three runs, including a two-run homer by Bichette. Finally he struck out Mark Vientos to end the game [VIDEO].
Before I wrap this one up, I wanted to talk about a weird play involving PCA. He led off the top of the seventh with a walk.
One out later, he took off for second as Michael Busch was drawing a walk. Then this happened [VIDEO].
The call here isn’t wrong. Even on a walk with a runner on, the runner isn’t automatically entitled to second base. He’s got to hold the base. The ruling, apparently, is that PCA was tagged when he wasn’t in contact with second. The thing is, I don’t really see that in the clip.
You might remember a nearly identical play from 19 years ago involving Ronny Cedeno. This video should be cued to the right place but if not, scroll to 3:29:25:
That was a much more important play in context. The Cubs trailed the Cardinals 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth. Cedeno clearly came off the base and was tagged. The Cubs would have had the tying run in scoring position with one out; instead they had one on and two out and lost the game 2-1. In the situation Tuesday night in New York, the Cubs led by five at the time of the play and it didn’t have any real impact of the game. The call Tuesday was probably correct, though it wasn’t as clear as the one from 2007.
Here are Craig Counsell’s postgame comments, including remarks about Cabrera [VIDEO].
Here’s Cabrera on the injury [VIDEO].
One last note on Cabrera’s game from BCB’s JohnW53:
Edward Cabrera’s final pitching line was 5.0 innings, two runs, three hits, four walks and four strikeouts.
No previous Cubs starter since 1901 had fashioned that exact line.
Eight had two runs, three hits and four walks, but a different number of strikeouts: Kerry Wood, 10, in 2002; Don Cardwell, six, in 1960; Rich Harden, five, in 2008; Rich Nye, in 1967, and Rich Hill, in 2008, three; Steve Trout, two, in 1984; and Ed Reulbach, in 1907, and George McConnell, in 1916, one.
And one more on this win from John:
The Cubs’ win improved their record to just 10-26 on anniversaries of The Sandberg Game of June 23, 1984 — and only 5-20 on the road.
They had lost their last three, two of them on the road, and eight in a row on the road overall, since a 2-1 win at the South Side over the White Sox in 2007.
They had dropped 13 straight on June 23 outside Chicago, since a 3-0 win at St. Louis in 1997.
The Cubs, as you know, have a split doubleheader today. The first game will be at 12:10 p.m. CT. The game preview here will post at 10:30 a.m. CT. The Cubs do not yet have pitchers officially listed for the doubleheader, though it should be Shōta Imanaga for one game and Javier Assad for the other. The Mets are going with Nolan McLean for the day game and Sean Manaea for the night game, which will be at 6:10 p.m. CT. Both games will be on Marquee Sports Network.
As usual, the Cubs will be allowed a 27th man for the doubleheader, and I’m guessing that will be the just-optioned Gavin Hollowell. As always, we await developments.
