ARLINGTON – The Cubs have navigated through an exhausting stretch of games over the past few weeks that included plenty of drama and a pile of historic footnotes along the way. Monday’s scheduled off-day will undoubtedly be welcomed by the ballclub.
“It’s a needed day off, for sure, for everybody,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said after a 3-0 loss to the Rangers on Sunday afternoon. “We’ll take advantage of it.”
The defeat at Globe Life Field put a period on a stretch of 23 games in 24 days for the North Siders, who went 18-5 to steadily climb from last place to the top of the National League Central. The Cubs had seven games separated by one run, five walk-off wins, four extra-inning games, a pair of 7-0 homestands and a trip out west against the Dodgers and Padres.
Within that period, the Cubs had a second 10-game winning streak – the fastest team to have two such runs in the same season since the 1955 Dodgers. Chicago pulled off three straight walk-offs against the same team for the first time since 1943. They extended a home winning streak to 15 games for the first time since 1935.
“To play as well as we did in that stretch,” Cubs outfielder Ian Happ said, “against some good teams is really impressive, and kind of a testament to the depth of the group. … That is a lot of baseball in 24 days. We’ll take the positives out of it.”
Here are three takeaways from Sunday’s series finale in Texas:
1) Simply put: deGrom was dominant
The Cubs boast one of baseball’s elite offenses, but the group could get little going against Rangers starter Jacob deGrom. In fact, the hard-throwing righty pieced together one of the best singular outings of the year to date against the Cubs.
The Cubs headed into the afternoon with the lowest strikeout rate (19.9%) as a team in the NL, but were punched out 10 times by deGrom. That matched a season-high for a pitcher against Chicago, equaling Emmet Sheehan’s showing on April 24 for the Dodgers. deGrom generated 23 whiffs, marking the most swinging strikes by a pitcher against the Cubs in ‘26.
Per the Elias Sports Bureau, the Cubs joined the 2006 A’s and 1980 Expos as the only teams in MLB history to be shut out in back-to-back games immediately following a winning streak of 10 or more games.
“He was really good today,” said Happ, who struck out three times in deGrom’s seven innings. “He did a really good job getting the fastball to tough spots, and that fastball-slider combo is pretty impressive. I had a few at-bats there where he just didn’t give me enough to hit.”
2) Play at plate marred Taillon’s outing
After fielding multiple questions about deGrom, Happ finished one of his responses with praise for Cubs righty Jameson Taillon.
“Jamo was awesome, too, by the way,” Happ said.
Taillon did what he could to hold the line, limiting the damage to one run in his 5 1/3 innings. Texas’ lone breakthrough arrived in the fourth, when Josh Jung singled to left and later crossed the plate on a fielder’s choice grounder off the bat of Alejandro Osuna.
With Jung on third, Osuna chopped a pitch from Taillon to Cubs first baseman Michael Busch, who gloved the ball and fired to catcher Carson Kelly. The tag from Kelly arrived around the same time as Jung getting a foot to the plate, and the safe call was upheld after a Cubs challenge and lengthy instant-replay review.
“That was a call stands – not a call confirmed,” Taillon said. “It was one of those they didn’t have enough evidence to overturn. I thought we made it super close and then we got a really nice double play right after that to keep us tight and in the game.”
3) Bregman gets a day off
Counsell noted that he plans to cycle through some off-days for the Cubs’ regulars in the days ahead, and it was Alex Bregman’s turn on Sunday. Paired with Monday’s off-day, it gives the third baseman a two-day break from competition as he continues to search for his rhythm in the batter’s box.
“I’ll just continue to work at it,” Bregman said. “And be confident in the fact that it’s going to happen. Just keep working. Keep getting after it. And at the end of the year, we’ll be right where we want to be.”
Bregman’s day out of the lineup followed an eight-game stretch in which he hit .129 (5-for-31) with a .411 OPS.
“Alex is probably off to a little bit of a slower start by his standards,” Counsell said. “It kind of makes me happy in a weird way [because that means] we’ve got some good Alex Bregman coming here.”