CHICAGO -- When the Cubs’ offense is firing on all cylinders, the lineup is capable of a versatile attack featuring contact, patience, speed and power. That was on full display during the first month of the season and confusingly went missing for much of May and early June.
On Friday afternoon, the North Siders once again had everything firing.
The Cubs churned out seven runs in the first inning, powering their way to a 16-2 rout of the Blue Jays in the opener of a three-game set at Wrigley Field. Leadoff man Pete Crow-Armstrong reached base five times in the win and Carson Kelly authored the game-changing swing with a grand slam in the opening frame.
“It’s who we are. Today was the definition of who we are,” Crow-Armstrong said. “Drawing walks against a guy who doesn’t walk people, mixed with hits and a homer. That’s exactly who we are. We put ourselves in really good opportunities today to hit with guys on and -- contrary to recently -- we made the most of those opportunities really well. It was a great day.”
This marked the first time since Aug. 13, 1959, that the Cubs ended a single game with at least 11 walks, 16 runs and 18 hits. Needless to say, it was more than sufficient in backing another stellar start from Ben Brown, who lowered his season ERA to 1.85 behind six strong innings.
A dominant narrative that has followed the Cubs over the past six weeks or so has been the team-wide issues with runners in scoring position. Heading into Friday’s game, the North Siders ranked second in baseball with 835 plate appearances in such scenarios, but were 28th in OPS (.682) with runners in scoring position.
During Friday’s win, Chicago ended with a 10-for-24 showing with RISP. The volume of traffic created consistently -- even as the results were not showing for an extended period of time -- continued to be an aspect people around the team would point to as a sign of pending positive regression.
“The runners in scoring in position stat that we had for a little bit while we were struggling,” Brown said, “for me and for mostly everyone here, I think we were able to look at that as a stat of like, ‘Look how close we are to scoring a lot of runs.’”
In the first inning, the Cubs forced Blue Jays right-hander Kevin Gausman (4.6% walk rate this season, entering Friday) to toil through 44 pitches. Chicago sent a dozen batters to the plate, delivering five hits, drawing four walks and stealing two bases within the outburst. It marked the Cubs’ first time scoring seven runs in an inning since, well, doing so in the second inning against the Rockies only one game ago.
The seven-run first inning represented the first time the Cubs had plated at least that many in the first frame since May 16, 2022, when they scored eight against the Pirates. Chicago has enjoyed an inning with at least seven runs in consecutive games for the first time since July 5-6, 2001, in Detroit. That had not been achieved at Wrigley Field since May 7-8, 1984, against the Giants.
The red-hot Crow-Armstrong got things started with a leadoff walk against Gausman in the first inning before stealing second base. Before long, both he and Alex Bregman were crossing the plate via a two-run double from Seiya Suzuki, whose fly ball up the right-field line gave Toronto outfielder Jesús Sánchez trouble at the side wall.
Gausman proceeded to walk both Ian Happ and Matt Shaw, setting up the second grand slam of Kelly’s career. The Cubs' catcher pounced on a first-pitch slider that hung up in the zone and sent it out to left for the no-doubt blast. Kelly later drew a bases-loaded walk in a four-run sixth and added an RBI infield single in the seventh to collect a career-high six RBIs.
“Right from the get-go, guys were putting pressure on them,” Kelly said. “It was, ‘Get to the next guy, just continue to get it to the next guy.’ To be able to come up in an opportunity like that and deliver is everything you dream of as a player. It was awesome -- it really was.”
In the seventh inning, Cubs outfielder Justin Dean -- called up from Triple-A Iowa prior to the game -- delivered a three-run triple as the exclamation point on a five-run flurry. It marked the first career hit in the big leagues for Dean, who received a rousing standing ovation from the Wrigley faithful when his milestone was displayed on the videoboard.
That was the cherry on top for the Cubs’ offense.
“We’re going to have days like this,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “We did it against a good pitcher today -- that’s as encouraging as anything. You’ve got to keep showing up and trying to do it. That’s how this works. There’s an incredible amount of baseball games left to play.”