I have to be honest with you, friends. About the fifth inning, I was mentally putting this one in the loss column. Oh, Shōta Imanaga pitched well enough after giving up home runs to the first two Rays batters he faced, but the offense looked totally listless after a first-inning run.
Good thing the Cubs didn’t mentally check out, and thus we were all given a rousing comeback by the offense. Nico Hoerner’s two-out, two-run double in the seventh provided the margin of victory in a 4-3 Cubs win over
the Rays, who are a better team than their sub-.500 record would show.
Imanaga’s beginning, as noted, wasn’t very good. Yandy Diaz and Junior Caminero homered to lead off the game, into a fairly strong breeze blowing in on an absolutely gorgeous late-summer afternoon at Wrigley Field. For Caminero, that’s 43 home runs this year. Did you know that? He’s one of the quietest really good players in this league, and he’s only 22 years old.
More on the homers from BCB’s JohnW53:
The two solo homers to start the game off Shota Imanaga raised his total to 26 for the year, of which 21 have come with nobody on base, four with a runner only on first and one with runners on first and second.
Eight have come in the first inning and six in the second, then three, four, three and two in the third through sixth.
Imanaga did come back and strike out the side, and the Cubs got one of those runs back in the bottom of the first. Michael Busch led off with a double and Nico singled him in [VIDEO].
Imanaga continued to strike out Rays, four in a row in the first and second, but got in trouble in the third, with a leadoff single by Caminero. After a force play and strikeout, a double by Nick Fortes moved Caminero to third and then Shōta couldn’t handle Josh Lowe’s bunt. Caminero scored to make it 3-1. Originally ruled an error, it was changed to a hit for Lowe, which made the run earned.
Imanaga completed five innings with nine strikeouts and no walks. It wasn’t a terrible outing, but with the homers, it wasn’t really that good either. More from John:
Imanaga’s nine strikeouts ties for the most without a walk by a Cubs pitcher this year. He also did it in a start of 6.2 innings at St. Louis on Aug. 10.
Matthew Boyd had eight without a walk in four starts, Ben Brown in one, and Imanaga in one.
And here’s even more on Shōta’s start [VIDEO].
The Cubs, meanwhile, couldn’t put any more runs on the board despite loading the bases with one out in the fourth on singles by Ian Happ and Moises Ballesteros and a walk drawn by Pete Crow-Armstrong (and you know how rare those are, that’s just 29 walks for PCA this year). Unfortunately, Willi Castro hit into a double play to end the inning, the second DP the Cubs had grounded into in the first four innings. Then they went out 1-2-3 in the fifth. Perhaps you can see why I was so down on this game.
After Javier Assad threw a scoreless sixth, Ian Happ brought the Cubs within one with his 22nd home run [VIDEO].
You can see that ball just barely make the basket, then bounce out. The ball was retrieved and taken to the Cubs dugout. It’s about as short a fly ball as you can hit in Wrigley Field and still have a homer, just 356 feet.
Historic note on Happ’s homer from John:
Ian Happ’s sixth-inning home run was the Cubs’ 200th this year, making this the first team in franchise history with at least 200 homers AND at least 150 stolen bases. They began Sunday with 151 steals.
Only eight previous teams had achieved the 200/150 power/speed double. The others, in chronological order:
1996 Rockies (221 homers/201 steals)
1996 Guardians (218/160)
1998 Blue Jays (221/184)
1998 Yankees (207/153)
1999 Reds (209/164)
2001 Yankees (203/161)
2012 Brewers (202/158)
2023 Rays (230/160)
Assad allowed a pair of baserunners in the seventh on a walk and a hit and then the Cubs got a break via replay review. Here’s the play [VIDEO].
The Cubs challenged via “slide interference” and the safe call at first was overturned, giving the Cubs an inning-ending double play and also taking a Rays run off the board. That turned out to be really, really important. It energized the crowd — including me! — and who knows, maybe energized the team, too, because they came out hitting in the bottom of the seventh.
Castro led off with a single and one out later, Matt Shaw also singled, with Castro holding at second. Busch struck out, and then Nico doubled in both runners [VIDEO].
So the Cubs had a 4-3 lead. Could they hold it?
Assad stayed in for Fortes, the first batter in the eighth, then Caleb Thielbar entered and got two ground outs to end the inning. The Cubs got a pair of runners on in the bottom of the inning but could not score, and that left it to Andrew Kittredge to close things out.
I really like the way Kittredge approaches these situations. He does not mess around and is not afraid to throw strikes to good hitters. He struck out a pair before walking Yandy Diaz.
That left the dangerous Caminero as the next hitter, and Kittredge worked him carefully, running the count to 2-2 before striking him out on a slider out of the zone [VIDEO].
A nice comeback, some good relief work, and a closer you did not expect a month ago. Nicely done, Cubs.
The win dropped the Cubs’ magic number to clinch a postseason spot to 5, and if the Dodgers hold on to their lead over the Giants, that will drop to 4. The magic number to clinch the top wild-card spot and home field in a wild-card series was reduced to 9. If somehow the Rockies can come back and defeat the Padres, that would drop to 8.
Here are some postgame comments from Craig Counsell:
And here’s Imanaga talking about Nico Hoerner:
Nico’s BA ended this game at .299. Trea Turner, who’s currently out with an injury and might not play again in the regular season, leads the National League at .305 (and already has enough PA to qualify). It’s not impossible that Nico could surpass Turner and win the BA crown. The last Cub to do that was Derrek Lee when he hit .335 in 2005.
The Cubs head on the road for their final trip of the regular season, all vs. NL Central teams. The trip begins Monday evening in Pittsburgh. Jameson Taillon will start the series opener for the Cubs and Braxton Ashcraft will go for the Pirates. Game time Monday is 5:40 p.m. CT and TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network (and MLB Network outside the Cubs and Pirates market territories).
