Entering this weekend’s series with the playoff hopeful Diamondbacks, the Cubs had scored 39 runs in their last four games and the third-most runs in baseball since the All-Star break.
Since Thursday, there has been a chill in the air at Wrigley and throughout the home team’s lineup. The Cubs (76-67) have been held to three runs total while dropping three straight games to an Arizona club now just one game behind them for the second wild-card spot.
“I don’t feel like we were going to roll until the end of the season without any bumps in the road,” manager David Ross said. “I don’t think we’re playing bad baseball. We’re just not getting the key hit when we need it.”
In Saturday’s 3-2 loss in 10 innings, a calamitous four-pitch sequence as reliever Daniel Palencia battled control issues contained as much scoring than the Cubs have managed in the last two games. A passed ball, followed by a wild pitch, a swinging strike and Tommy Pham’s RBI single to left turned runners at the corners into a two-run deficit that doubled as a coup de grâce.
“At some point, it’ll obviously come through,” Dansby Swanson, after collecting two hits but popping out with tying run aboard to end the game. “We’ve proven time and time again that we will bounce back. These games have been competitive. It’s not like something where we’re laying down.”
Palencia was erratic throughout the 10th. He hit scuffling rookie Jordan Lawlar with a pitch to place the eventual second Diamondbacks run of the inning aboard, and sent an errant pickoff throw into right field. While Ross said pregame that recent additions like Brad Boxberger would need time before they worked their way into high leverage, Palencia has now walked or hit 13 out of the 80 batters he’s faced.
But with Justin Steele providing seven more innings of one-run ball, regaining control of the NL ERA lead at 2.49 before giving way to scoreless frames by Julian Merryweather and Adbert Alzolay, Palencia’s 10th merely represented the first crack in a Cubs pitching staff that worked without a margin for error all day.
Cody Bellinger’s two-out RBI single in the 10th was the first and only Cubs hit with runners in scoring position in nine tries. The only Cubs run in regulation came from Nico Hoerner sprinting all the way to score from first – after bunting his way on – on what should have been an inning-ending popout from Bellinger in the third that dropped between Arizona defenders on the infield dirt.
“He plays hard, but also smart,” Swanson said of Hoerner, as they both know the challenge of catching popups in the Wrigley Field wind.
That wind has turned decidedly against the Cubs as they fell five games behind the division-leading Brewers in the loss column. After clocking five home runs in a livelier version of their home park in a three-game sweep of the Giants, all Cubs contact has fallen short of their fences these past three days.
Yan Gomes’ ninth inning drive to left hit the top of the wall and he was thrown out at second, from where he would have scored the game-winning run easily on Nick Madrigal’s double to right in the next at-bat. Ian Happ’s 10th inning slice to left looked primed to sail over Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s head, setting him up to score the tying run on the Bellinger single that followed… until it didn’t.
“Wrigley Field giveth and taketh away,” Happ said Friday, noting the weekend’s conditions.
Five walks against Diamondbacks starter Merrill Kelly suggests the offensive approach has not collapsed in three days. The series loss is calamitous for the odds of selling tickets to a first round home playoff game, but not the team’s view of itself.
“We’re a really good team,” Ross said. “This group hasn’t wavered all year, and I doubt they will.”