CHICAGO -- The decibel level inside Wrigley Field kept climbing in the ninth inning Tuesday night. The crowd was revved up after Nico Hoerner flipped away his bat after a leadoff walk. Things were buzzing even more when Pete Crow-Armstrong followed with a single into right field.
Images of a walk-off celebration were forming for the fans watching it all unfold.
“And then it just stopped,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said.
The three outs that came next put the period on a 2-1 loss to the A’s that ended with a collective groan inside the Friendly Confines. Jameson Taillon gave Chicago a strong start, but an offense that has been trying to get things going again stalled, going quiet against A’s lefty Gage Jump in his second career start.
The end result was a seventh consecutive loss at home for the Cubs, who had rattled off 15 consecutive wins at Wrigley Field prior to this latest skid. It has been a season of extremes for the North Siders, who are trying to avoid having their tough May linger too deep into June amid what has proven to be a competitive National League Central landscape.
“This has been a wake-up call, I hope, for everyone,” Taillon said. “It definitely has been for me. Nothing is going to be handed to us and the Brewers are for real again. They’re a very good team. Our division is really good. The league is really tough. It’s just going to take a lot of work to dig ourselves out of this.”
Crow-Armstrong could hardly argue with Taillon’s assessment.
“I think a ‘wake-up call’ is a nice way to put it,” said the Cubs’ center fielder.
Crow-Armstrong noted that a “sense of urgency” can be a tricky mentality when there are still roughly four months and 100 games left on the regular-season schedule. That said, the Cubs have slipped 6 1/2 games back of the first-place Brewers after sitting in first place as recently as May 18.
“There’s still a lot of time left,” Crow-Armstrong said. “But, again, you don’t want to fall into a trap of getting too comfortable. And when stuff isn’t going very well, there comes a time where you do want to turn it around. And it kind of has to.”
While there have been pitching problems within the rotation and bullpen -- both areas impacted by injuries -- the lineup’s inconsistency has stood out.
During the 20-3 stretch with two 10-game winning streaks from April 14-May 8, the Cubs posted an .846 OPS as a team with 6.2 runs scored per game. They went 2-14 over their following 16 games (including a 10-game losing streak) in which the lineup had a .553 OPS with 2.5 runs per game.
Entering Tuesday, Chicago had a .770 OPS with 5.8 runs per game in the previous five games. That recent offensive showing offered hope that some players – and the group as a whole – are trending up. The results did not follow suit Tuesday.
“We’re always close to clicking,” Crow-Armstrong said. “It could be tomorrow. It could be a week from now. When it happens, it’s going to be fun.”
Taillon allowed a solo shot to A’s slugger Nick Kurtz in the third and then a go-ahead single to Zack Gelof in the fourth. After posting a 6.66 ERA in five starts in May, the veteran Cubs starter went 6 1/3 innings for his first quality start since April 29. The two runs he allowed were damage enough on this particular evening.
“We need to produce more runs to win that game,” Counsell said. “It was a good start from Jameson.”
The Cubs manufactured one run in the first – Nico Hoerner singled, stole second and later scored on a groundout by Alex Bregman – but that was it. After a Michael Busch single in the second, Chicago went 21 batters without a hit prior to Crow-Armstrong’s single in the ninth. The Cubs also had two costly outs on the basepaths in the first two frames.
In the first, Crow-Armstrong was caught trying to steal third. One frame later, Kevin Alcántara was nabbed en route to second to end the inning, stranding Ian Happ on third. Alcántara was attempting to get caught in a rundown to open a window for Happ to score, but the play broke down too early.
Counsell said they did not “coach it well enough,” but there was a larger issue Tuesday.
“We’ve got to create more offensive opportunities,” Counsell said.