That was a close game for a while, but boy it got silly there at the end. Chris Martin was better than his line looks, and Daniel Norris was worse.
Justin Steele came out of the gate without his usual zip on the fastball, and the breaking ball command was a bit off. So he got hit around a bit, and had trouble putting hitters away for the first two innings. Understandable given his layoff and brand new baby, but it seemed like it was going to be a short night.
… and then he cruised for four innings. It was a pretty impressive effort to turn those first two innings into 6.0 IP with just 3 ER.
The hits just weren’t falling in for the Cubs despite a decent bit of quality contact. Chris Morel crushed a triple to right, but that was the only bit of really hard contact that actually went for a hit.