The opener of this series did not go the way the Cubs wanted, and during it, the news of Ryne Sandberg’s passing was made public.
This recap was going to be a tough one to write regardless of the score after the passing of Ryne Sandberg was announced on Marquee Sports Network during Monday’s game. As a reminder, I will have a complete obituary reviewing Ryno’s life and career coming up here at 11 a.m. CT.
This game? The Cubs started out well, but Matthew Boyd had a rare bad outing and the opener of the three-game set went to the Brewers 8-4.
The first inning, though, was good Cubs baseball off Milwaukee’s rookie phenom Jacob Misiorowski. Michael Busch led off with a single and Kyle Tucker walked. Seiya Suzuki followed with an infield hit and so the Cubs had the bases loaded with nobody out.
Pete Crow-Armstrong then struck out. But… [VIDEO]
The wild pitch scored Busch to make it 1-0 Cubs.
Carson Kelly then also struck out. Then Ian Happ’s little dribbler was thrown away by Misiorowski and two runs scored [VIDEO].
It’s 3-0 Cubs, Misiorowski has thrown 40 (!) pitches in the first inning and the Cubs’ best pitcher is on the mound. What could possibly…
Well, you know how to complete that. Everything went wrong for Boyd, who couldn’t find the strike zone. He managed to get through the first two innings scoreless, thanks in part to this great defensive play by Matt Shaw [VIDEO].
In the bottom of the third with a runner on first and nobody out, Boyd struck out Jackson Chourio for his 1,000th career strikeout [VIDEO].
The rest of that inning, though, was a disaster. Three hits, a walk and a sacrifice fly put four Brewers runs across the plate and Milwaukee had a 4-3 lead.
Andrew Vaughn homered off Boyd in the fifth to make it 5-3, and five innings was it for Boyd, who just didn’t have control or command in this one. He threw only 52 strikes in 90 total pitches and walked five, just the third time in his career he’d done that, and not since 2019. More on all the walks from BCB’s JohnW53:
Matthew Boyd had not walked more than two batters in his previous 14 starts. He had not walked more than three since he issued four on Aug. 20 of last year with the Guardians. This was his 28th start since then.
He now has walked at least four in only 17 of his 203 career starts.
Ryan Pressly relieved Boyd in the sixth and served up a home run to Sal Frelick that made it 6-3. That makes runs allowed for Pressly in three of his last four outings and if he’s going to stay on this team, he really can’t pitch in anything but garbage time for a while.
The Cubs got to within 6-4 in the seventh. Nico Hoerner led off with a single and one out later, Busch was hit by a pitch. Kyle Tucker’s single scored Nico [VIDEO].
Busch was thrown out at third on the play, and maybe he should have just stayed at second base. Seiya Suzuki followed with a strikeout that ended the inning.
Chris Flexen was the next Cubs pitcher, and as good as Flexen was for the first three months of the season, that’s how bad he’s been lately. A two-run homer by Christian Yelich put the game basically out of reach. Flexen had an ERA of 0.62 in 16 games through July 3. In five games since then: 7.98 ERA in 14⅔ innings, with six home runs allowed. Yikes.
One last note about this game from BCB’s JohnW53:
Since June 11, the Cubs are 21-18. They allowed two runs each in two of the losses, four in one and at least six the 15 others:
6: 1
7: 2
8: 7
9: 1
11: 1
12: 2
14: 1That adds up to 142 runs in all the losses, an average of 7.89 per game. In the wins, they have allowed 37 — 1.68 per game, more than six runs fewer!
And one last thing about this game in general: I thought the ball-and-strike calls from plate umpire James Hoye were pretty bad — for both teams. I’ll be interested in seeing the Ump Scorecard when it’s posted later this morning.
To return briefly to what we’re all thinking about today, here’s the tribute shown on Marquee when Sandberg’s passing was announced [VIDEO].
Here are Craig Counsell’s thoughts on Sandberg [VIDEO].
Again, a full tribute to Sandberg will post here at 11 a.m. CT today.
As for the Cubs, they’ll try to even up the series in Milwaukee Tuesday evening and get back into a tie for first place, as they now trail the Brewers by one game. Colin Rea will start for the Cubs and Quinn Priester goes for Milwaukee. Game time is again 6:40 p.m. CT and TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network.