Resilient Cubs don't let gray skies or grand slam spoil their day in Detroit with 6-4 win
DETROIT - Right around the scheduled game time Wednesday, thick black clouds floated overhead, plunging Comerica Park into near darkness. A couple hours later, it was all sunny skies in downtown Detroit.
The transition was appropriate for the second-half Cubs, who find themselves in dark places sometimes, but have also shown the ability to create pleasant endings.
The Cubs celebrated another series win with a 6-4 victory over the Tigers. They've gone 23-10 since July 18, but 10 of their last 11 victories were by 1 or 2 runs.
In his postgame remarks, Cubs manager David Ross used the word "resilient" at least three times when describing this performance.
"Resilient win," he said. "That's a better team than their record over there with all those young guys swinging it well. We came away with another series win, which is nice. We keep stacking those up, we're going to be in a good place."
This game started very well for the Cubs. Pitcher Jameson Taillon was on top of his game and tossed 5 hitless innings, while the Cubs scored 4 runs off Detroit's hard-throwing left-hander Tarik Skubal.
To start the sixth, though, Taillon gave up three straight singles to load the bases, got the next two batters on a strike out and short fly out, before second-year outfielder Kerry Carpenter sent a 3-1 cutter to the top of the wall in right for a game-tying grand slam. All that brilliant work by Taillon erased with one swing.
"Unfortunately, I've had to deal with that a lot this year where I feel I'm close to having a good day and I don't," Taillon said. "It's not something you want to get used to, but it's something that I've gotten a little better at processing. There's just a few pitches I needed to make a little better and I would have had a better day."
Carpenter was 4-for-7 with 3 RBI in the first two games of the series, so Taillon wanted to proceed with caution, but then again, the bases were loaded.
"I'm trying to process all that in like 15 seconds with the pitch clock," he said. "So I'm trying kind of run through it all - where do I want this, where's my miss, what's he doing damage on, what did we talk about, what's he shown me today? So yeah, it is what it is. I'm happy we won."
But, as mentioned above, the Cubs have been resilient lately. So while relievers Michael Rucker, Julian Merryweather and Adbert Alzolay kept the Tigers off the scoreboard, the Cubs picked up single runs in the eighth and ninth.
The go-ahead hit was a two-out RBI single by Yan Gomes. The eighth-inning rally began with Ian Happ reaching on a one-out grounder that got past the Detroit middle infielders. The play was initially ruled an error on shortstop Zach McKinstry, but later changed to a hit.
The Cubs tacked on an insurance run in the ninth with a walk to Jeimer Candelario, pinch-hit single by Christopher Morel, sacrifice bunt, then a sacrifice fly by Nico Hoerner.
"We've been saying this all season long, we keep putting guys on base and keep giving us a chance to win, those hits are going to come through," Gomes said. "Today it happened to be me, Nico as well. Amazing job by Nicky (Madrigal) just to sacrifice and move guys over. That's winning baseball."
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