NEWSLETTER
Well, it’s a good thing the wind was blowing way in tonight, because the Twins were absolutely CRUSHING the baseball from the get-go. By my count, there were 16 balls in play that left the bat at over 100 MPH tonight, 11 of which belong to the Twins — the only Cubs contributions included Willson Contreras’s homer (113.3 MPH, 1st), Ian Happ’s single (108.8 MPH, 3rd), Trayce Thompson’s homer (105 MPH 8th), Rafael Ortega’s single (102.9 MPH, 12th), and Nico Hoerner’s game-ending double play (100.5 MPH, 16th).
So what is there to really say about this game? The Cubs let the Twins come into Wrigley Field and score 9 runs on 16 hits and two stolen bases in a 4+ hour slog that had very few bright spots and plenty of ugly. And for the Cubs, that’s especially true on the pitching side of the ledger, where Alec Mills allowed 7 runs (6 ER) and Trevor Megill was singularly rocked, among many other forgettable relief appearances.
The Twins’ offense is decidedly not awful, but still … we’re talking about 9 total runs with the wind blowing in HARD. It would’ve been much worse on an average night.
And yet, none of the above was worse than Conor McGregor’s first pitch … or his seventh inning stretch, both of which – I kid you not – are going to be in the Hall-of-Fame of worst of all-time at Wrigley Field. Right up there with Ozzy.
In the theater of the weird, the Cubs were hit four times tonight, stole three bases, and watched a Willson Contreras throwing error allow a run to score in the top of the first.
On the bright side, Nico Hoerner and Patrick Wisdom were each on base three times tonight, though even that includes an intentional walk and a HBP for Hoerner and 2 HBPs for Wisdom, so … yeah, not quite so impressive once you dig in. Other than that, Ian Happ had another couple hits (he also rocked a line drive from the right side of the plate, which was nice to see) and Frank Schwindel kept his hitting streak alive. It’s now up to 10 games.
The silver lining (which is totally, meaningfully different than a bright side), the Cubs are now just one game behind the Twins for the 7th pick in the draft. Hooray.Â
