The Cubs end their otherwise very good homestand with a thud, dropping what had been a close one to the Padres.
You can’t know whether, with a smaller deficit, the Cubs’ bats would have somehow done something else in the 9th, but the game got out of reach when Joe Maddon elected to bring Carl Edwards Jr. into a dirty inning (never a great thing) for his first appearance back with the team. This is a guy who was previously sent to the minor to work on the mental side of the game, and it seems to me a little softer landing would have been advised (and then after that, evaluate whether it’s worth it – more on this stuff later). As it was, a two-on, two-out situation turned into a walk, a hit batter, a single, and three more runs for the Padres.
In any event, the inning technically didn’t matter in the final accounting, because the bats got just that one run in the first and that was. Kyle Hendricks was his typically solid self, and that was VERY good to see for the second half.
Anyway. About those trade rumors …