CHICAGO — Back-to-back two-strike hits in the ninth inning upended the Cardinals and spoiled what could have been a night remembered for two essential bounce-back performances.
Paul Goldschmidt had three hits and Sonny Gray had seven sterling innings, but both outings by Cardinals veterans got eclipsed by a two-run lead blown in the ninth inning. Off the bench and into a mosh pit of teammates, Mike Tauchman delivered a two-out, two-strike double to left field that sent the Cubs to a 5-4 victory Thursday at Wrigley Field.
Tauchman’s double off Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley scored Dansby Swanson moments after his two-strike double tied the game.
The loss was Helsley’s third blown save of the season.
Goldschmidt opened the scoring with a solo homer, and Cody Bellinger created the drama in the ninth with a solo homer. Bookended between those two in a game brimming with home runs, Masyn Winn’s two-run laser in the seventh inning yanked the Cardinals back into the lead. The Cubs snapped a tie game on Cardinals starter Gray an inning earlier — with, of course, a solo homer — and that’s when Winn struck against lefty Shota Imanaga.
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The rookie’s eighth homer of the season and sixth off a lefty gave the Cardinals a one-run lead that would grow to two that same inning. Goldschmidt’s third hit of the game extended the rally for the 4-2 lead that reached closer Helsley for the ninth.
Bellinger’s homer gave the Cubs life.
Swanson’s double gave them a new game.
Down 0-2 against Helsley to start his at-bat, Swanson got a 1-2 slider from Helsley that he laced into left field. Nico Hoerner had stolen second base, so he scored easily on Swanson’s double to knot the game 4-4 and obscure the work Gray did through seven innings.
In his previous five starts, Gray had seen his season ERA bloat by nearly a run. He allowed 45 base runners over his previous 28â…“ innings, and while the Cardinals went 2-3 in those games, Gray needed all the run support possible to offset a 6.67 ERA. Opponents were batting .331 against him, slugging .568. The right-hander would begin postgame comments by talking about how he felt physically strong and knew exactly what to do despite being statistically adrift.
Proof came quickly and repeatedly Thursday.
Gray reconnected with the effectiveness and variety of his pitches. He landed six different pitches, but it was his tried-and-true sweeping slider that got five of the 15 swings and misses. He was able to establish his four-seam fastball, and that allowed him to tease hitters into grounders and whiffs with his two breaking balls, the curve and sweeper. It wasn’t until his third trip through the Cubs lineup that Gray started hoarding strikeouts, and by then, he’d limited them to four hits through five innings, three of which came in a single burst.
Opposite Gray, Cubs lefty Imanaga shoved strikes at the Cardinals. Before Goldschmidt’s third hit chased him from the game, Imanaga allowed 10 hits through 6⅔ innings. He did not walk a batter, and no wonder: Of his 91 pitches, 71 were strikes.
Suzuki shatters tie game
In an inning where Gray breezily struck out the side, the only blemish was a big one.
Two batters into the sixth inning, with the game still tightly knotted at 1, the rain at Wrigley started to intensify. Fans would soon be reaching for ponchos or scurrying from their seats. But by the time they did, the Cubs had seized the lead when Gray misplaced a sinker.
On a 1-0 pitch to outfielder Seiya Suzuki, Gray left the fastball up, and Suzuki catapulted it for the longest home run of the Cubs’ season. Suzuki’s 16th homer of the summer traveled an estimated 459 feet into the center field bleachers. The no-doubter snapped the 1-1 tie and left Gray with a deficit despite sixth strong innings.
Not to mention an otherwise strong sixth.
Gray struck out the batters on either side of Suzuki to give him nine strikeouts for the game, six of them coming in the span of eight batters.
The hiccup in that stretch was the homer.
It’s been one of the curious scars on Gray’s pitching lines this season. He allowed four solo homers in a single game at Atlanta to assure what a trend was already showing. The homer by Suzuki was the 13th off Gray this season — the most he’s allowed in a season since he called the cramped confines of Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park home. Gray allowed 19 homers in 135⅓ innings that season. His 13th homer allowed this season came in his 117⅔ innings
Goldy rush
When the Cardinals imagined their offense coming into this season, the bat they expected to be in the middle of everything — literally and figuratively — belonged to their former MVP.
Goldschmidt’s struggles throughout the season have grounded his on-base plus slugging percentage to below .700, his slugging to sub-.400 and led to him moving down in the lineup because too often he wasn’t in the middle of rallies. He was at the end. Moved back toward the top Thursday to face the lefty Imanaga, Goldschmidt was exactly what the Cardinals originally expected.
He got the offense going on his own.
He kept it going with a little help.
He was back in the middle of it and middle of everything.
Batting third, Goldschmidt greeted Imanaga in the first inning with a 404-foot bolt beyond center field for a quick 1-0 lead. Goldschmidt’s two-out homer gave him 17 for the season. With a single in the third inning, Goldschmidt had his sixth multi-hit game since coming back from the All-Star break. He collected his third hit in the seventh inning to raise his batting average 10 points in just five days.
That third hit was a double to put him a triple shy of the cycle and restart a rally for the Cardinals. Two batters after Winn’s decisive swing, Goldschmidt’s double chased Imanaga from the game and got the middle of the order around with a runner in scoring position. Nolan Arenado immediately welcomed Jorge Lopez into the game with an RBI single. That scored Goldschmidt and increased the lead to two runs.
Century tidbit
With his three hits, Goldschmidt gave the Cardinals five different players with at least 100 hits. Arenado, Winn, Brendan Donovan and Alec Burleson had previously reached that many. The Houston Astros are the only team with as many players with 100 hits.
Sonny’s finishing touch
One of the most aggressive and important strikes Gray threw in his start wasn’t toward home.
Given the seventh inning and the bottom of the Cubs lineup with teammates readying in the bullpen, Gray invited trouble with a one-out walk to the No. 7 hitter, Swanson. The walk was Gray’s one and only of the game, and he helped neutralize it. On the 93rd and final pitch of his start, Gray got a ground ball close to the mound from Cubs rookie Pete Crow-Armstrong.
Gray bounced off the mound to reach and get a glove on the grounder. With his momentum carrying him toward the first base line, Gray planted and drilled a throw to second base. That eagerness to get the lead runner allowed Winn to respond in kind — with a fastball to first base that completed the inning-ending double play.
Gray got 16 outs from the final 18 Cubs he faced, and the only lasting welts were the solo homer that momentarily gave the Cubs the lead and a single that came with two outs in the third.