CHICAGO – There is no way to know right now if what took place at Wrigley Field on Thursday night will go down as a turning point in this season for the Cubs. All that can be said in this moment is that it was precisely the category of win the ballclub needed after multiple weeks of frustrating, team-wide performance.
Circle this win for now. That narrative can be revisited later on.
“Hopefully we tell that story in October,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said.
This night’s story ended with Pete Crow-Armstrong flinging his helmet skyward as he rounded first base in the ninth inning, setting off the party after the Cubs pulled off a wild 7-6 walk-off win over the A’s. That snapped Chicago’s eight-game losing streak at Wrigley Field and – the North Siders hope – snapped the lineup out of its recent funk.
Crow-Armstrong delivered the decisive single for the first walk-off hit of his career, capping off a furious four-run, seven-hit outburst in the final frame. That was more run production in one inning than Chicago managed in 15 of its previous 23 games. It was the kind of relentless rally that played a starring role when the Cubs rattled off 20 wins in 23 games between April and May.
“For us to get that win is something we can build off,” Crow-Armstrong said. “But just kind of the reminder that this is who we are, that’s so important when times are like this.”
And, of course, it was Crow-Armstrong in the spotlight right before the “W” flag was hoisted atop the old ballpark’s scoreboard. His game-winning single served as his final swing at redemption after an unfortunate play in the sixth inning marred lefty Shota Imanaga’s outing and had the Cubs potentially heading toward a sweep at the hands of the A’s.
During the ill-fated frame in question, Shea Langeliers sent a pitch from Imanaga high over center field as dusk set in. Between a picturesque sunset and the arriving night sky, Crow-Armstrong peered up and simply lost sight of the baseball. He put his hands out at his sides and then to his head, confused, as the ball dropped to the grass behind him.
“It’s one of the more helpless feelings in the world,” Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson said.
Langeliers was off to the races with an improbable, two-run, inside-the-park home run after previously hammering a solo shot off Imanaga in the fourth. The blunder put the Cubs in a 4-0 hole, and it was the type of setback that could have sent Crow-Armstrong spiraling. When the Cubs center fielder reached the dugout, Counsell kept the message simple.
“You feel terrible. It’s a big play,” Counsell said. “But I told him when he came in the dugout, ‘Man, go have a great at-bat. How can you affect this now? You can’t think about what just happened. You have to go have a great at-bat. And that’s it.’”
“It was very brief and to the point,” Crow-Armstrong said. “It was pretty perfect.”
Crow-Armstrong slipped into an 0-2 count in the home half of the sixth, but then A’s righty J.T. Ginn left a slider in a dangerous part of the zone. Crow-Armstrong took out his frustration on the pitch, belting it at 110.1 mph off the bat and sending it over the right-field wall for his second homer in as many days.
“Turning the page, that’s something I look up to about him,” Imanaga said, via his interpreter Edwin Stanberry.
“That’s a place where Pete is getting better,” Counsell added. “I was proud of him.”
“In the past, I might’ve dwelled on that,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I’m just growing up a little bit.”
The comeback continued in the seventh, when Alex Bregman led off with a double and Ian Happ launched a two-run blast a Statcast-projected 446 feet to right field. That helped mitigate the impact of the back-to-back homers Imanaga had yielded to Tyler Soderstrom and Jonah Heim in the top of the same inning.
And then in the ninth, the hits piled up in a hurry.
Michael Busch doubled. Happ delivered a two-base hit of his own to bring in a run. Nico Hoerner singled. Moisés Ballesteros chopped a ball that shortstop Alika Williams could not corral cleanly, opening the door for another run. Seiya Suzuki came off the bench and contributed a pinch-hit single.
That set things up for Swanson, who was 0-for-3 on the night to give him a .147 (15-for-102) average dating back to the beginning of May. The veteran shortstop entered the evening with a .140 average with runners in scoring position. None of that mattered when he sent a two-strike pitch from Luis Medina up the middle for a game-tying single.
At first base, Swanson punched the air multiple times.
“I’m most happy for Dansby,” Counsell said. “It’s been rough. But he came up big.”
Crow-Armstrong took care of the rest in a win that the Cubs badly needed.
“We’ve stayed in the fight all year,” said the center fielder. “And we’ve been fighting through these last couple weeks. But I’ve said it, this kind of stuff is exactly what we’re capable of.”