I think we can exhale, just a little, after the Cubs’ 5-2 win over the Reds Saturday evening in Cincinnati.
The victory reduced the Cubs’ magic number to clinch a postseason spot to 2. If the Cubs win Sunday and the Yankees defeat the Diamondbacks, the Cubs will be in. Thus it would appear very, very likely that the Cubs will be playing a Wild Card series. The question remains: Where? The Padres passed the Phillies into the second wild card spot when they won Saturday and the Phillies lost. The Cubs’ magic number to clinch home
field against Philadelphia is 6, and against San Diego it’s 7. So, thanks to the tiebreaker that they have over both teams, the Cubs actually now control their own destiny — win out, and the Padres and Phillies cannot catch them for home field. (That’s not likely, of course, but it’s mathematically possible.)
First things first, let’s look back at Saturday’s win.
The game went scoreless into the second inning, which is when the Cubs took a 1-0 lead. Nico Hoerner led off with a double and Michael Busch was hit by a pitch. A force play put Nico on third, where he scored on this sac fly by Matt Shaw [VIDEO].
The Cubs flashed some glove in the bottom of the inning, a nice sliding catch by Tyrone Taylor [VIDEO].
I cannot emphasize enough how good a pickup Taylor was. Not only can he play solid defense at all three outfield positions, but he absolutely crushes left-handed pitching, something Ian Happ is decidedly not doing this year. That makes Happ and Taylor a pretty good platoon arrangement.
The game remained at 1-0 into the top of the fifth. Dansby Swanson led off with a single and advanced to third on a pair of ground outs. Seiya Suzuki’s single scored Dansby to make it 2-0 [VIDEO].
The Reds tied the game up in the bottom of the fifth thanks to some sketchy Cubs defense — and that’s not a phrase we’ve used much this year, when the team defense has been at elite level.
Eugenio Suárez led off with a single. After a strikeout, this strange sequence ensued [VIDEO].
First, Shaw overthrew his cutoff man. Then Swanson made an ill-advised throw in the general direction of third base, which got away, allowing Suárez to score and putting JJ Bleday on second. That clip is from the Reds broadcast. On Marquee, JD said that he thought Suárez hesitated going around second, though I didn’t see that. In any case, there should have been runners on first and third with one out. Instead, a run is in and there’s a runner on second.
After a strikeout, Boyd faced Ke’Bryan Hayes, who is having a miserable season. Hayes came into the game batting .144 with a .433 OPS and since returning from a groin strain Sept. 7, was 1-for-19 with eight strikeouts. Never mind all that! Hayes singled, scoring Bleday to tie the game.
The Cubs took the lead back in the top of the sixth when Michael Busch sent this baseball into orbit [VIDEO].
That ball was crushed! [VIDEO]
After that, Boyd was removed in favor of Daniel Palencia, who threw two scoreless innings with three strikeouts. This was the first time since April 19, 2025 — 81 appearances ago — that Palencia had thrown two full innings in a game, and he looked really good in this outing. His velocity was up, touching 100 a few times, and he had his devastating slider working. If he can continue this, that is an enormous boost to a bullpen that could really use that. Palencia’s six outs were recorded on just 20 pitches.
The Cubs extended their lead in the top of the eighth. With one out, Happ batted for Taylor and walked. He advanced to second on a wild pitch, and scored on this single by Nico [VIDEO].
That was an aggressive send, especially since you can see Happ hesitate before the single gets through. But the throw to the plate was cut off and the Cubs led 4-2.
Aaron Civale, who’s been really good in relief for the Cubs, recorded the first two outs easily in the eighth, then gave up a single to Dane Myers and a walk to Elly De La Cruz.
Craig Counsell summoned Ryan Zeferjahn to pitch to Sal Stewart. Zeferjahn wild-pitched the runners up a base, then ran the count full on Stewart before striking him out on this nasty sweeper [VIDEO].
Hopefully, that was a confidence-builder for Zeferjahn, who’s got the repertoire to succeed if he can just throw more strikes.
Swanson gave the Cubs a three-run lead with his 19th home run with one out in the ninth [VIDEO].
A note about the pair of Cubs homers from BCB’s JohnW53:
This was the second of the Cubs’ last three games in which they hit multiple home runs. They had done so in only two of their previous 14 games, beginning Sept. 1, the day after they smacked a team-record nine homers against the Brewers.
Zeferjahn was sent out for the bottom of the ninth. He allowed a leadoff single, then retired the next two Reds. But Counsell, correctly, was not going to let him face the left-handed Bleday, so Ryan Rolison entered to finish things up.
Which he did with this foul pop-up [VIDEO].
I cannot remember the last time the Cubs bullpen put together a line like this: Four innings, two hits, one walk, no runs, five strikeouts. That’s the kind of work this team is going to need if they are going to succeed in October, so it’s great to see it happen. Perhaps this pen can still come together and help the team win games.
Here are Counsell’s postgame remarks [VIDEO], which include a lot of praise for the bullpen.
We covered the postseason permutations above. The Cubs are 5-3 since they were swept by the Brewers in Milwaukee and if they can go 5-2 over the last seven games of the regular season, their chances of that top wild-card spot are pretty good, I’d think.
They can begin that by winning Sunday’s series finale against the Reds. The starters will be David Peterson for the Cubs and Rhett Lowder for Cincinnati. Game time is 12:40 p.m. CT and TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network. The BCB game preview will post at 11 a.m. CT.
