Wake Up and Watch the Cubs Beat Up on the Cardinals for Nine Runs

No, yesterday’s win over the Cardinals was not the blowout that Tuesday night’s win was. After jumping out to a huge early lead, the Cubs allowed the Cardinals back into the game (or, if you want to be more complimentary, the Cardinals fought their way back in) in the middle innings.

A two-run lead then became a one-run lead in the 7th inning on a Matt Adams homer (man, how much did he and Randal Grichuk kill it this series?), and it was an exceedingly tense three innings from there. Thankfully, Justin Grimm, Pedro Strop, and Hector Rondon came in to close things down, even if it was still fairly bumpy throughout the latter third of the game. Heck, the first two batters against Rondon in the 9th reached, but he managed to strike out Yadier Molina and Randal Grichuk, and then managed to knock down a comebacker, scramble to get the ball, and make a good-enough throw to first base to end the game.

But, truly, all is well that ends well, and, since the Cubs pulled out the victory, it seems all the more appropriate to enjoy the nine runs they put up.

For the second day in a row, the Cubs’ scoring started with a six-run inning:

There was some of that better sequencing fortune that the Cubs had been missing during their recent skid. And five of those six runs came with two outs. That’ll make folks smile.

Also making folks smile? The next three Cubs runs came on this Kris Bryant blast:

I love the body language reaction of Cardinals reliever Seung-Hwan as the ball leaves the bat: “Oh.”

That was the first home run Oh has allowed this season, and he’d been pretty dominant until that inning.

That was Bryant’s 10th home run of the season, with his good for 9th in the National League (and one behind Anthony Rizzo for the team lead (quick, who’s next on the Cubs? … yup, Ben Zobrist at six)).

The homer was a no-doubter, went 416 feet, left the bat at 104.8 mph, and would have left all 30 parks, according to the Home Run Tracker. Appropriate in some ways that Bryant homered right around the same time that Rangers rookie Nomar Mazara hit this season’s longest home run, a 491-foot monster blast, which was four feet shy of last season’s longest home run, hit by none other than then-Cubs rookie Kris Bryant.

That was already the 19th(!) time this season that the Cubs have scored at least 7 runs, and the 8th time they’ve scored at least 9. Ridiculous.