At the time, it was one of those good things that you can’t really appreciate fully because of all that preceded it. If we knew that Alec Mills and the bullpen would go on to keep things scoreless from there, we probably would’ve been even more excited by the incredible relay from Albert Almora to Javy Baez to Martin Maldonado in the first inning.
It was the final play of the frame, and it was one of those that pretty much had to be executed perfectly by all three players to record the out:
Perfect throw from Almora to Baez, perfect turn and throw from Baez, and a perfectly-applied quick tag from Maldonado.
Without that play, not only does the run score, but maybe things get even worse from there. It’s not a stretch to say, in a game that saw the Cubs come back and walk it off in 10, that first inning play may have saved the game.