It has been far from a nice start to the season for the Cubs, but they improved to 6-9 tonight with a win over the Marlins. I’ll take it.
Yu Darvish had a solid outing overall tonight, finally. He struggled with his command early, but tightened up after the second inning. It was clear Darvish was emptying the tank in the 6th inning, when he was hitting 99(!) mph on the gun. Unfortunately a wayward 99 mph fastball ricocheted off Lewis Brinson’s junk, into the umpire’s throat, and Joe Maddon decided to pull Darvish with two outs. It felt a bit much, though I suppose it did work out as Kyle Ryan finished up the inning quickly. Still, would have been nice to see Darvish actually be permitted to get through six innings.
Offensively, the Cubs got contributions from all over, but especially from Javy Baez and Willson Contreras, who had a nice bounce back from his ugly finish on Saturday.
All in all, a very nice win for the Cubs.