That’s it! The Cardinals are out of the NL Central race, and the Cubs’ magic number in the division is down to just one. A Cubs win or a Brewers loss the rest of the way, and that’s that.
If you told me coming into this game that the Cubs’ bats would explode for 10 runs and Jon Lester would have has first very solid start in a while, but neither of those things would be the story of the game, I’d wonder how that was possible.
But it was possible, since Addison Russell’s dive into the stands, destruction of nachos, and redemption of a Cardinals fan’s snack was definitely the headline. Baseball is fun and silly.
It’s especially fun and silly when the Cubs are beating down the Cardinals in St. Louis. And it’s especially especially fun when all 10 runs the Cubs scored came with two outs. And it’s especially especially especially fun when the Cubs’ win eliminated the Cardinals from NL Central contention.
The one potential dark note from this one was an early exit for Javy Baez after he fouled one off of his knee, but hopefully he’s OK.
For the purposes of this EBS, we’ll assume Baez is going to be OK, and we’ll deem it safe to have some fun.