I told you this was a good Cubs team!
They spotted the Dodgers a lead, came back to take a one-run advantage, blew that lead partly on bad defense, then came back again and held on with solid relief pitching to defeat the Dodgers 7-6 Wednesday evening at Wrigley Field.
In so doing they won the season series from L.A., four games to three. Who knows, maybe that’ll matter in October.
Matthew Boyd started this game out well, without allowing a run in the first two innings. Then he got in trouble with a leadoff walk to Michael Conforto in the third. It was the only Cubs walk of the game. And… this is some bad umpiring, Alan Porter:
The Cubs didn’t seem happy with pitch 6, which was ball four. But as you can see, pitch 2, which was called ball two, was a strike… and pitch 1 was close enough and could have been called a strike, too.
One out later, two singles, the second by Shohei Ohtani, loaded the bases. Boyd got Mookie Betts to line out to Michael Busch, but then Teoscar Hernandez singled in two runs.
The Cubs came back in the fourth after the Dodgers removed opener Ben Casparius with one out. Dansby Swanson singled and Nico Hoerner walked.
That landed very close to the spot where Miguel Amaya had hit his game-tying homer in the ninth inning Tuesday.
Boyd threw a 1-2-3 fourth, so the Cubs had a 3-2 lead heading to the fifth. After a leadoff single, Boyd induced a comebacker… and then made a bad throw to second trying to start a double play, with both runners safe. Boyd got Ohtani to fly to left and then picked Austin Barnes off second.
So that’s good! Now there are two out, but Betts doubled to left, tying the game 3-3, and Teoscar Hernandez smacked a two-run homer that gave the Dodgers a 5-3 lead.
Did that matter to the Chicago Cubs? No, dear reader, it did not. Not to this new, “never quit” version of the Cubs.
With one out in the bottom of the fifth, Kyle Tucker and Justin Turner walked — and then the pair pulled off a double steal.
That resulted in this amazing fact from BCB’s JohnW53:
So the Cubs took a two-run lead into the sixth. That lead was cut to one when Andy Pages homered off Boyd. Boyd finished off the sixth and got a “quality start” because three of the six runs he allowed were unearned due to his own throwing error. It was Boyd’s worst outing as a Cub… and it wasn’t terrible. He threw 92 pitches (64 strikes).
So after dropping two to the Dodgers in Tokyo, the Cubs won four of the last five between the two teams, and outscored them in the seven games between the teams 42-31 (granted, that’s skewed a bit by the 16-0 win at Dodger Stadium). They held Shohei Ohtani to a .172/.250/.310 line (5-for-29) with one home run over the seven games between the teams, and that home run in Tokyo was definitely fan interference, but there’s no way that was going to be overturned in the Tokyo Dome.
The Dodgers are a very good team, but they have flaws, as you saw in both the Dodger Stadium series and the one at Wrigley. You know what? The Cubs are also a very good team. They’re 16-10, with all but three of those games against playoff contenders. The Dodgers are 16-9 and they’ve played the noncontending Rockies and Nationals (4-2 vs. those teams), and also swept the Braves, who might or might not still be a contender after their awful 0-7 start.
The Cubs are thus finished for the 2025 regular season against the Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Padres. They went 11-9 against those three teams, which is a perfectly fine result. It’s entirely possible the Cubs could meet one or more of those teams in October. I look forward to that.
With this win and the Brewers’ loss to the Giants late Wednesday, the Cubs lead the NL Central by 2½ games, the second-largest current division lead (Mets, five games over the Phillies).
The Cubs will enjoy their off day Thursday and then open a three-game series against yet another contending team, the Phillies, Friday afternoon in Wrigley Field. Colin Rea will start for the Cubs and Taijuan Walker gets the call for Philadelphia. Game time Friday is 1:20 p.m. CT and TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network (and MLB Network outside the Cubs and Phillies market territories).
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