You can rarely sum up the entirety of an offensive performance in just four swings, and I won’t pretend that’s the case for yesterday’s game either. Other stuff did happen!
… it’s just that only four swings resulted in the Cubs’ five runs on the day. And they were all pretty fun.
Consider that Dexter Fowler led things off for the Cubs with a long at bat, and a go-down-and-in-and-yank-it homer to left, which you can watch here if you missed it. That was 403 happy leadoff feet.
Jorge Soler tied the game up in the 4th when he went down and got a 90mph fastball and ripped it to the gap in left, which you can see here. If it looked like that baby got to the wall in a hurry, it did – that was 106mph off the bat. It’s been a long climb for Soler, but his ongoing hot streak has his line up to .216/.315/.376 (89 wRC+).[adinserter block=”1″]
Because the ball got stuck in the ivy, only one run was permitted to score on the play, even though it looked like the Cubs were about to take the lead. An Addison Russell strikeout and David Ross intentional walk later, Jason Hammel had a chance to help himself. And, with an assist from the second base bag, he put it back up the middle for a two-run single.
Hammel was excited:
L I T pic.twitter.com/YltGpkIVMd
— Randall J. Sanders (@RandallJSanders) June 4, 2016
Then, Anthony Rizzo made sure to add some late insurance with this blast:
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Boy. Daniel Hudson was angry about that one.
And the always awesome in-crowd shot of Rizzo’s homer, thanks to Jack:
https://twitter.com/JackRennolds/status/739226002044358657
At 415 feet, that was Rizzo’s third longest homer of the year, and longest since April 20 (when he was in the middle of that crazy streak – remember? Rizzo hit five homers in five games, and would have had a sixth but for a Randal Grichuk robbery).
The homer capped a hot streak for Rizzo, who had been slumping (kinda) before these last seven games:Â .429/.538/.810.