MESA, Arizona — Matt Halbach doubled in Scott Kingery with one out in the ninth and the Cubs had a walk-off 9-8 win over the Royals on a beautiful afternoon at Sloan Park.
Those guys, of course, aren’t likely going to be playing for the Cubs this year, though Kingery might wind up at Triple-A Iowa as infield insurance.
Before that happened, the teams combined for seven home runs and the Cubs wound up batting in very weird sequences in the seventh and eighth innings. I’ll get to the latter, but let’s
begin at the beginning.
Colin Rea allowed a run in the first inning on a triple and an error by Nico Hoerner, and then the Cubs got to work in the second. With two out, Carson Kelly and Dylan Carlson singled and Matt Shaw was hit by a pitch.
Pedro Ramirez cleared ‘em with this grand slam [VIDEO].
Gotta tell you, I am really impressed with Ramirez. He turns 22 on April 1, plays solid infield defense and has hit well this spring. Granted, spring, granted, small sample size but this is a player to keep an eye on.
Nico was next and sort of made up for his error by homering [VIDEO].
So it’s 5-1 Cubs, but Rea gave that all back by allowing three home runs in the third and fourth innings. The 5-5 tie stuck until the seventh, with Caleb Thielbar and Hunter Harvey throwing efficient scoreless innings, then Hoby Milner gave up a homer to give KC a 6-5 lead in the top of the seventh.
The Cubs scored a pair in the bottom of the inning and I swear to you, they batted out of order. Now, that doesn’t really matter in Spring Training but take a look at this part of the boxscore:
What happened here was this: Rojas had replaced Hoerner in the top of the seventh and should have led off the inning. Instead, Moisés Ballesteros led off and singled. Then he was replaced by Joan Delgado as a pinch-runner. THEN Rojas batted, and struck out.
Don’t ask me why. That’s what I saw. It broke Gameday for quite some time, eventually the above is what they went with. Th Cubs scored two runs, one on an RBI single by Brett Bateman, one on an RBI single by Kingery. The Cubs led 7-6 going to the eighth.
Jacob Webb gave up an unearned run thanks to an infield popup that was dropped by Halbach. In fairness, there was a bit of wind that blew the ball near the mound. That tied the game. A homer off Gavin Hollwell in the ninth gave KC the lead, then the Cubs won the game in the ninth. Justin Dean challenged a pitch that was called strike three, and it was overturned. Given another chance, Dean doubled. He scored the tying run on Kingery’s single and then Halbach won it with his double.
This might have been a meaningless spring result, but right there you can see how an ABS challenge can help change the result of the game. You can be sure the Cubs are filing that info away for future reference.
Attendance watch: 12,026 attended this Wednesday afternoon affair at Sloan Park. That makes the season total for 11 dates 132,824, or 12,076 per date.
The Cubs will host the Seattle Mariners at Sloan Park Thursday afternoon. Edward Cabrera will start for the Cubs and Emerson Hancock will go for Seattle. Game time is 3:05 p.m. CT. No TV Thursday, but the Mariners flagship station Seattle Sports 710 AM will have a radio broadcast.
