Injuries, injuries, injuries.
It’s all that seems to dominate the conversation around the Cubs these days, and for good reason.
While injuries are a part of any baseball season, the Cubs have been particularly bombarded, especially on the pitching side, with an entire rotation and late-inning mix of relievers on the IL simultaneously.
But coming just as rapidly as the injuries? More and more Cubs wins.
The latest? A 3-2 walk-off victory to start a series with the Padres, the 10th walk-off this season at Wrigley Field.
Though they’ve put six players on the IL in the last six days and are staring at some long layoffs for key contributors, they’ve also won 13 of their last 17 games.
After a 6-1 road trip and taking two out of three from the division-leading Brewers, Monday saw the Cubs best Mason Miller, the Padres’ flamethrowing closer and one of the best ninth-inning men around.
After back-to-back base hits off Miller’s bullpen-mate Jason Adam – he had a 2.30 ERA coming in – in the bottom of the ninth, the Cubs got two singles in three batters against Miller, who had only given up 14 hits all season.
Slugger Seiya Suzuki lifted a fly ball to the ivy that was almost corralled for a game-saving catch. Instead, the ball bounced away, and the Cubs got to celebrate.
For Suzuki, it was his second big moment against one of baseball’s premier fireballers in recent days after he homered off Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski last Friday.
“To be honest,” he joked through an interpreter after the game, “I’m kind of surprised myself that the ball is hitting the bat.”
The task has seemed tall as the injuries have piled up. Can these Cubs – not too far removed from an early-summer stumble that dropped them from the top of the division to around .500 – stay afloat long enough to get healthy and chase their championship-level goals?
They’ve stood up to the challenge right away, getting strong – in some cases out-of-nowhere – bullpen performances and seeing the lineup come to life past center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, who was on base four times Monday and scored the winning run as his ridiculous June continued.
Suzuki is the notable hot hitter of late. After four hits, two homers, six RBIs and a couple runs scored in three days in Milwaukee, he had two hits, including a double, with an RBI and a run scored Monday.
“He’s one of the top hitters in MLB,” starting pitcher Shota Imanaga said, through an interpreter, of his teammate and countryman. “The hits, the homers, especially in the situations where the team needs it and he delivers, that’s not really surprising to me just because I see all the work he puts in behind the scenes. He’s a hard worker, and that’s just the results coming out.
“He’s a fantastic player.”
The Cubs have a few of those, enough to make a serious effort at weathering the current storm.
So far, so good.
“It shows the teamwork,” Suzuki said. “In those situations, the next guy comes up, and he delivers. It shows everybody on this team we can compete.”