NEWSLETTER
Hey, that’s my kind of win.
The Cubs didn’t blow the doors off the Rockies tonight – though it seemed like they might after a very loud first inning (5 hits, 3 runs, and a HBP). But they stayed in the game, battled through some tough moments, and never stopped pushing on both sides of the ball. It just felt like a big “culture” moment to not fall apart given how many gaffes there were all around the diamond.
For example, there were at least two big fielding errors tonight, one of which was a total communication breakdown between Seiya Suzuki and Nick Madrigal on a pop-fly that fell between them (it didn’t actually count as an error, but that was generous of the scorekeeper). And there were also two errors on the bases … on the same play … that cost the Cubs a run. Suzuki was again involved in this one, when he seemed to forget how many outs there were and took off for second base on a fly out. If he had stayed on first – or if Jonathan Villar had run hard(er) to home plate – the Cubs would’ve added a run to their tally. Alas, they both goofed and got no runs instead.
But like I said, the good outweighed the bad overall.
Justin Steele looked sharp for most of the evening, and probably would’ve had enough left in the tank to finish the fifth if a couple of errors didn’t extend his outing earlier on. Unfortunately, his velocity started waning and you could just tell he was fatigued as he started missing his spots and walking batters. I’m going to dig in to his outing more deeply tomorrow, but generally speaking his (almost exclusively) fastball-slider approach was really working for him. It was a solid follow-up to his first start of the season, especially given the setting.
And while Ethan Roberts failed to clean up Steele’s inning, Keegan Thompson came in, got out of the jam, and tossed three more scoreless innings of relief (!) thereafter. What a stud.
On the other side of the ball, you can count multi-hit games for Nick Madrigal, Jonathan Villar, Frank Schwindel, and Yan Gomes. Plus, Ian Happ had another hit from the right side of the plate (and made some excellent defensive plays in left field), and Frank Schwindel hit his first homer of the year.
As a matter of fact, everybody in the Cubs starting lineup – except Patrick Wisdom – was on base at least once tonight. Great team win.
