NEWSLETTER
Ideally, the Cubs bullpen wouldn’t have to keep throwing up zeros over such an insanely long streak, but the Cubs’ bats put up only the David Bote line-drive homer today. There wasn’t much in the way of stringing together singles, and the Cubs lost at least three would-be homers to the extreme wind (Joc Pederson twice, Patrick Wisdom once). So the offense just wasn’t there.
That one by Wisdom, by the way, was absolutely crushed:
A fly out by Patrick Wisdom was affected by the wind even more that Pederson's ball earlier at Wrigley: 86 feet in, 34 feet leftward. But I'm sure @whatwouldDOOdo totally meant to let him do that. pic.twitter.com/uTJScrjb75
— Ken Arneson (@kenarneson) May 28, 2021
Pederson’s two were also clear homers on a normal day. At least Bote hit his on such a freaking line that the wind had no chance to knock it down.
Adbert Alzolay had some great movement on his pitches today, but definitely not his best command (the cold and the howling wind probably played a big part in that). But the stuff is so good he can grind his way through it, especially in these elements, and turn it into a decent outing. There was a ton of traffic and some deep counts (on … questionable calls), so Alzolay managed just 5.2 innings despite going a whopping (for him) 103 pitches. Overall a good outing, though, albeit with a BIG assist from a ground-rule double that would’ve otherwise scored a run (a critical run, apparently!).
And, like I said, the bullpen was fantastic once again from there (Tommy Nance as an 8th inning setup man … what a freaking story). Another scoreless day, this time covering 3.1 innings. So impressive.
