In front of the Fourth of July crowd at Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs displayed the kind of offensive production that has been sorely lacking all season.
Driven by Ian Happ’s pair of three-run homers, the Cubs beat the MLB-leading Philadelphia Phillies 10-2 on Thursday. They had not scored double-digit runs since April 16 in Arizona.
“We’ve been looking for one of these for a while now, where we can go out there and everybody contributes,” Happ said. “Let’s ride that momentum and see what we can do.”
Happ went 4-for-4 with a single and a double to go with his two home runs, and he homered from both sides of the plate for the second time in his career (he previously did so on May 7, 2018 against the Miami Marlins). His first homer, which came from the right side with Cody Bellinger and Seiya Suzuki on base, erased the Phillies’ 2-0 lead in the fourth inning.
An inning later, Happ came to bat with a new pitcher on the mound (and again with Bellinger and Suzuki on base). Philadelphia’s starter, lefty Christopher Sanchez, was pulled after back-to-back singles in the fifth, leaving Happ to bat against right-hander Seranthony Dominguez, a pitcher he’d only faced four times before Thursday. Happ had to switch over to the left side, but he still pulled a 2-2 slider into the stands in right field to give the Cubs an 8-2 lead.
“He threw me two good sliders that I had a chance to hit and fouled off, so I was able to get one and turn it around and made a really good swing on it,” Happ said. “Felt good.”
With his career-high six runs driven in, Happ now has 36 RBIs over his last 35 games (since May 26), the most in the National League in that stretch. Only New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge has more (44) over that stretch.
Every batter in the lineup reached base Thursday, and along with Happ, Suzuki had a multi-hit game and Bellinger reached safely twice. The Cubs offense has not had a lot of days like this in the last two months — a stretch in which they’ve lost 13 of their last 15 series — and even after a collectively great day at the plate, the question is whether any of it will carry over.
There are positive signs in that regard: Suzuki went 2-for-3 with two walks Thursday, and he has three home runs in the last week. Nico Hoerner has reached safely in 12 of his last 14 games, and Bellinger is batting .339 over his last 15 games.
The key for the Cubs in even attempting to right the ship of the 2024 season will have to be continued production from the guys at the top and in the middle of the lineup. That will lead to more high-scoring days like Thursday. The starting pitching has been solid, and though the bullpen has struggled for stretches, a big part of that has been because of injuries to key high-leverage arms.
As the offense was finally putting up crooked numbers Thursday, Jameson Taillon held the Phillies to two runs over seven innings while striking out seven and not giving up a walk. Taillon has now tossed five straight quality starts.
“He just pounded the strike zone today, no walks,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “Just made [the Phillies] swing the bat, just aggressive in the zone, especially with a lead, that’s how you want to do it.”
Taillon said he didn’t feel particularly great mechanically against the Phillies, but that worked to his advantage in that he simplified his approach and focused on keeping his pitches in the strike zone.
“On days like that it’s really important to limit the walks, invite some early contact, let the defense make plays,” Taillon said. “Throw strikes with all the deep repertoire I have, just kind of keep them off one pitch, one speed.”
Thursday’s win was in many ways the kind of game Cubs fans have been starved of for most of this season.
The starting pitching was great, the bullpen didn’t have to throw high-stress innings, and the lineup produced top to bottom. But again, the Cubs have not been good at putting together a string of games like this one, leaving them eight games under .500 just over a week from the All-Star break and less than a month from the trade deadline.
“It’s a nice win,” Taillon said of Thursday’s effort, “but good teams do it often. Come back tomorrow and play another good game, and then you start stacking good days. These days feel really good. Everyone should feel good about it tonight, then you should wake up, come to the park, and everyone’s got a job to do again.”
Unless they use this win as momentum to put together several weeks’ worth of games like it, the Cubs’ window of contention won’t open for a while longer. If president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer and general manager Carter Hawkins are selling at the trade deadline, that will signal a longer rebuild than fans expected when he first started trading players from the 2016 championship squad at the 2021 deadline.
Since that group broke the World Series drought eight years ago, the bar in Chicago has gone up. When the Cubs posted a winning record and came just shy of the playoffs in 2023, it looked like they might be close to contending again. When they lured Counsell south from Milwaukee, that looked to be even more true.
Instead, the Cubs are in last place in their division and facing the very real possibility of being sellers in the next few weeks.
“We know how much this fanbase expects and how much they deserve, and they come out every single day no matter what,” Happ said. “They deserve a really good baseball team, and I think we all in this clubhouse believe we have that in the tank. It’s been a tough stretch, but you have a game like today where you put up 10 and feel really good about it, so we’ll see if we can keep that rolling.”
