Christian Yelich with the walk-off double in the 9th. Not the guy you want to let beat you, though it didn’t help that the winning run was only on base because of a throwing error from the fill-in shortstop. Sigh. That Javy Baez injury is really going to hurt.
Yu Darvish was fantastic for his five innings of work, and was pulled after just 72 pitches – clearly a nod to the management of his forearm tightness, and the fact that he was returning after his last scratched start. It sucks that he couldn’t go deeper – especially since the Cubs immediately gave up a run – but that’s the way it might be for a little while.
For the most part, it was yet another night of the Cubs failing to do anything against an inferior, soft-tossing starter. It aggravates me to no end that the Cubs managed one solo homer (Addison Russell) off of Gio Gonzalez, but it was also no surprise. This version of Gio does this to the Cubs every time.
The Cubs had a bases-loaded, nobody out chance in the 8th, with the heart of the order coming up … but the Brewers have Josh Hader. Thankfully, although he struck out Nick Castellanos and David Bote, while getting Kris Bryant to pop up, he also walked Anthony Rizzo in the middle of that. You felt pretty lucky to get even that off of Hader.
But one pitch into the bottom of the frame, Yasmani Grandal homered to tie things up (his third homer in three days against the Cubs), and an inning later, Yelich did his thing.