NEWSLETTER
The Cubs got the full Rays treatment tonight: An opener that got five quick outs, a momentum-changing successful challenge that led to a couple runs early on, a perfect, last-second shift against Ian Happ with the game on the line, and a 3-5 (HR, 2B) performance from one of the game’s best prospects in the last decade (Wander Franco). What are you gonna do? That’s like all of their things.
The offense fought back hard – a couple times, actually – bringing the game-tying run to the plate in the ninth inning. And there were some brilliant plays both on the field and out of the dugout, but they ultimately came up just short. They’ll try again for the series win tomorrow behind Marcus Stroman.
In the meantime, no, the Cubs had no multi-hit games tonight, but they still struck out only six times and managed to score five runs for the seventh time this season (out of only 11 games). If you keep doing that, the wins will pile up eventually. Seiya Suzuki also managed to get on base three times, all free passes. And he’s so good that actually brought his slash line down from .429/.564/.929 (285 wRC+) before the game to .414/.581/.897 (280 wRC+) afterwards. Which, lol.
As for Justin Steele, we’ll dig into his performance a bit more tomorrow. The short version is that he was locked in early on, lighting up the strikezone and using all of his pitches, but started missing up badly with his fastball and his curveball. And although he was bailed out for a second by a perfectly-timed double-play, the Rays challenged and won, setting up Wander Franco’s two-run homer.
All the losses count the same, but this just wasn’t a “bad” one. Onto the next.
