CHICAGO -- Sparked by a game-tying two-run homer by Alex Bregman in the ninth inning, the Cubs went on to win via walk-off in the 11th inning, beating the Blue Jays, 3-2, on Thursday at Wrigley Field in a makeup game from June 21.
Down to his final strike with two outs and his team trailing by two runs, Bregman said his mentality against Toronto closer Louis Varland was pretty simple.
“Tie the game,” Bregman said. “Just trying to put a good swing on a good pitch to hit, and obviously facing one of the better relievers in baseball, so just kind of battle and compete.”
Though Varland can touch triple digits with his fastball, he threw a first-pitch slider and then three straight curveballs against Bregman, pitches even Bregman admitted might have been the right choice.
“Maybe more recently I’ve been hitting them, but early in the year, maybe curveball might have been a good pitch [against] me,” Bregman said.
But with the wind blowing in and Pete Crow-Armstrong on base after a leadoff single, Bregman found the basket in left field for a home run to send the game to extras. In the 11th inning, Crow-Armstrong hit another leadoff single and advanced to second base on Myles Straw’s throw from center field that caught Carson Kelly attempting to score from second.
That put Crow-Armstrong in position to score the game-winning run when he stole third and then ran home on a throwing error by Blue Jays catcher Brandon Valenzuela to complete the walk-off.
A day after he homered twice while going toe-to-toe with fellow National League MVP candidate Shohei Ohtani, Crow-Armstrong’s pair of late-inning singles and baserunning acumen added to his MVP resume.
“That’s what I’ve been wanting to add to my situation for the last few years,” Crow-Armstrong said of his growing arsenal of ways to help the Cubs win ballgames. “That’s my style of play, [and] I guess we’re all getting to see me do a little bit of everything more and more often now.”
Crow-Armstrong said the decision to go for third base was a tough one, given that lefty Brendon Little was on the mound, but he said he was banking on taking advantage of Little’s spin numbers and his ability to get to third on a breaking ball versus a fastball. The split second of extra time looked to have been just enough for Crow-Armstrong to get to third base and force the errant throw by Valenzuela.
“That’s why were talking about Pete so much, it’s because every facet of the game he can do it, and that’s just so rare,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “That’s so rare in the game. But it’s for situations like that, when you have somebody you think you can get a base on, but it’s also the biggest situation. It’s the 11th inning.
“It’s a big base, that’s a huge base. Put some pressure on the defense, and they made a mistake.”
The ninth and extra-inning heroics from Bregman and Crow-Armstrong came after the Cubs were stymied by Toronto starter Dylan Cease for seven innings. Against Cease, they produced just three baserunners, and only one -- Miguel Amaya in the sixth inning -- reached scoring position. They struck out 10 times, six of them looking, and drew one walk.
The Blue Jays scored in the first inning on a disengagement violation by Cubs starter David Peterson, which was enough for Cease until Toronto added an insurance run on Andrés Giménez’s RBI single in the seventh inning.
But otherwise, the Cubs pitching staff limited Toronto to only those two runs, which gave the offense a chance to stage the late-game comeback. After Peterson’s five innings, Ryan Rolison, Aaron Civale, Caleb Thielbar, and Trent Thornton combined for six one-run innings.
“We were short with some guys who were not going to pitch today, so those guys did a heck of a job out of the bullpen,” Counsell said. “Six innings, one run, you’ll take that every single day.”
With Thursday’s walk-off win, the Cubs are 18 games above .500 and have a firm hold on the top wild card spot in the National League. They are in the midst of 17 straight games without a day off, a run that started on June 24. In that stretch, the Cubs have gone 10-4 so far, with three games in Kansas City before they have an off-day.
“This is the toughest 17 games [of] baseball we’ve played,” Crow-Armstrong said after the Cubs’ 5-2 homestand against the Yankees, Dodgers and Blue Jays. “But that’s also something that we really look forward to. At the end of the tough part, I think it’ll be nice to reflect on how it went, but I think during all of it, you’ve seen so many guys step up.”