In one of the wildest games of the year, the Chicago Cubs wound up with a 7-6, 11-inning, Fourth of July win Tuesday over the Milwaukee Brewers.
Reliever Daniel Palencia won in his major-league debut, manager David Ross and first-base coach Mike Napoli were ejected, the bullpen blew a four-run lead for Kyle Hendricks and left fielder Ian Happ threw out runners at the plate for double plays to end the 10th and 11th innings.
“Super emotional,” Hendricks said. “Geez, unbelievable ending there. What can you say? Happer and Palencia coming up in his debut. Unbelievable ballgame and a great win, obviously, for us.”
Otherwise it was a dull day for the 41,133 fans in Milwaukee. The win snapped a three-game losing streak for the Cubs and was the latest chapter in a dizzying post-London stretch that had them on the brink of falling out of the race.
“We needed a win,” Happ said. “The momentum of that one made it a big win, but we needed to win a baseball game there.”
To understand what made this so big, one had to understand what the Cubs went through the last two weeks. They scored four first-inning runs against the St. Louis Cardinals in the second game of the London Series on June 25, looking to get back to .500 for the first time since May 12.
With 11 wins in their previous 13 games and Marcus Stroman on the mound riding a seven-game winning streak, it looked like the Cubs finally had turned a corner in a season that began with so much promise before hitting a wall in late April.
The Cubs were trying to buck history. A 12-26 stretch that began the final weekend of April had left them 10 games under .500 after a sweep by the Los Angeles Angels on June 6-8 in Anaheim. Only two teams in franchise history were able to fight back to .500 after being double digits under the break-even mark.
If the 2023 Cubs were to become the third, it would go down as an inspiring comeback story for a veteran team led by newcomers Dansby Swanson, Cody Bellinger and Trey Mancini — all of whom were brought here in part for their championship experience.
But a few defensive misplays at first by Mancini started the Cubs’ downfall, and the Cardinals stormed back to take the lead in London. Stroman was removed in the fourth with a developing blister on his right index finger and was charged with six runs (three earned) on nine hits in a 7-5 loss that sent the Cubs home with a split.
Despite a missed opportunity, the Cubs were in good spirits when they returned to Wrigley Field two days later for the start of a six-game homestand against the Philadelphia Phillies and Cleveland Guardians. It would be a chance to get back over .500 before a crucial four-game road series against the Brewers.
An air quality alert stemming from Canadian wildfires threatened to postpone the first game, with Chicago having the worst air pollution in the world, deemed “very unhealthy” by the EPA. But MLB decided after conversations with the players association that the show must go on.
The Cubs lost 5-1 to the Phillies in a haze, and the postgame discussion in the clubhouse was about how the league decided to play in the first place.
“You smell it, you taste it, but you just go out and play baseball and forget about it when you go out there,” said Happ, the Cubs player rep.
Happ didn’t know what went into MLB’s decision, but league sources told the Tribune it was made after consulting with multiple medical experts, weather forecasters, the teams and their medical staffs.
The air quality was marginally better the next day, but Drew Smyly allowed season highs of seven runs and nine hits in an 8-5 loss. The Cubs offense was lifeless the following day, as the Phillies won 3-1 to sweep the series.
There was no reason to panic. The Cubs were still only five games back in the National League Central, a division no one seemed eager to win. A 10-1 victory over the Guardians on the final day of June provided hope the worst was behind them. The Cubs finished June with a respectable 14-11 record, a far cry from their 10-18 performance in May.
But July started out poorly.
After a long spring drought, the skies opened Saturday, leading to a nearly three-hour delay of the start of the nationally televised game against the Guardians. Fox Sports reporter Ken Rosenthal said on the broadcast the Cubs would not negotiate an extension for Stroman before the Aug. 1 trade deadline — despite the pitcher’s lobbying on Twitter — leaving the option open to trade their star if they fall out of contention.
Stroman’s blister issues were behind him, but he suffered his second straight loss as the Cubs fell 6-0 in a game that ended near midnight. Most Cubs fans were sleeping by the end of the game, just like the lineup.
Sunday morning began with a deluge, and the Cubs made an early decision to push back the starting time three hours to 4 p.m. to avoid the worst of the storm. Another two-hour delay ensued, making for another long day at the ballpark.
The Cubs offense was shut down again, entering the ninth trailing 6-2 with only three hits. But Mancini’s single ignited a four-run rally that saw the Cubs come back and tie the game. It was the first time since a 7-6 win over the Cardinals on July 20, 2021, that the Cubs scored four or more runs in the ninth to tie a game or take the lead.
But what could’ve been a momentum-shifting win fell by the wayside when the Guardians scored a pair of runs off closer Adbert Alzolay in the 10th, giving Cleveland an 8-6 victory and ending the homestand at 1-5. The Cubs had lost three games in the division standings since their opening win in London and now trailed the Brewers and Cincinnati Reds by six games.
The sun came out again Monday in Milwaukee, and the Cubs responded with six early runs in the opener of the crucial series against the Brewers.
Smyly issued a one-out walk to the No. 9 hitter, then three straight run-scoring hits as the Brewers cut the deficit to three. A pair of leadoff walks by Smyly led to his early departure in the fourth, and the Cubs bullpen that had paved the way for their June revival frittered away the lead with three walks in a three-run seventh.
The Cubs wound up with an 8-6 loss, their seventh in eight games, falling seven games behind the co-leading Brewers and Reds while also losing Nick Madrigal to a hamstring injury. They hit a combined .238 with a .653 OPS in that eight-game stretch, while Cubs pitchers posted a 4.94 ERA. That’s not going to make them buyers at the trade deadline.
With the long flight to and from London, jet lag, air quality issues and long rain delays, the Cubs seemingly ran into one obstacle after another. Reliever Michael Fulmer called the rest of the Brewers series “must-win” games, while Swanson said the Cubs need to “man up” and own it without looking for excuses.
The Cubs did just that Tuesday. They brought up Palencia from Triple-A Iowa before the game, and Ross turned to the rookie in the 10th after Alzolay gave up the tying runs in the ninth.
“When I’m on the mound, I’m a monster,” Palencia said beforehand. “When somebody asks me, ‘How do you feel?’ I say, ‘Like a monster.’”
Palencia gave up a one-out single to left, but Happ threw out ghost runner Andruw Monasterio at the plate. Catcher Miguel Amaya made it a double play by throwing out Owen Miller at second, thanks to Nico Hoerner’s tag on Miller oversliding the bag.
After a replay review confirmed the call at home, Hoerner’s two-out, RBI infield hit in the 11th gave the Cubs a 7-6 lead. During Swanson’s ensuing at-bat, Napoli and then Ross were ejected.
Ross laid into the umpiring afterward for a bad game at the plate and on a couple of calls.
“It just wasn’t very good, and we made that known,” he said. “Just got to be better. Closing the roof to get rid of the shadows late? A lot of (bleep) going on today.”
Asked if a team is allowed to close the roof during play, Ross replied: “A lot of (bleeping bleep). I don’t know.”
Palencia came back out for the 11th after the emotional ending to the 10th.
“My mindset was on the monster, and ‘I’m going to win this game,’” he said.
Happ caught Brice Turang’s one-out fly to left and nailed Miller at the plate to end it, sending the Cubs dugout up for grabs.
Palencia got the balls from his first out and his first game. He proudly showed them to the media. “I’m going to put them in my room and watch them all night,” he said.
Ross was so charged up afterward, you wondered if he was going to explode outside the Cubs clubhouse, where he conducted his postgame interview.
“To be able to fight back after all we’ve gone through the last couple days,” he said. “So much character in that room, I wish people at home could feel that.”
The Cubs had won the first of their “must-win” games, and it was one they’ll be talking about for years.
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