The Cubs walked out of Wrigley Field on Sunday with a series win that had the place shaking, and Craig Counsell let it show. After Jordan Wicks induced Gary Sanchez into a 5-4-3 double play to seal it, Counsell was as animated as he’s been all year, a fitting finish to a tense weekend that felt like a statement from a team that had no business winning the way it did.
Chicago dropped the opener 6-2 on Friday night, then answered by taking the next two from Milwaukee. That included Sunday’s tight finale, a game the Cubs needed to survive after Milwaukee clawed back to 4-3 in the bottom half. The ending belonged to Wicks, but the setup was just as striking: Alex Cohen made the right call, Counsell emptied out the emotion in the dugout, and the crowd responded like it was a Cubs home date in name only.
The atmosphere made sense. Wrigley North was packed with Cubs fans all weekend, and the noise matched the stakes.
Chicago went into the series with a pitching plan that still looks a little wild on paper. David Peterson started Saturday, and Bryse Wilson handled the bulk of Sunday’s bullpen game.
Neither pitcher had been in the organization a week earlier - Peterson arrived in a trade with the New York Mets, and Wilson came in after being claimed off waivers from the Philadelphia Phillies.
That was the backdrop while Milwaukee lined up its top three starting pitchers against the Cubs at home. It didn’t matter. Chicago found a way to win the series anyway.
Seiya Suzuki delivered the biggest swing of Sunday’s game, punching a bases-loaded single to left field that drove in two runs. Jackson Chourio’s bobble helped the Cubs get the second run home without much resistance, and that cushion mattered when the Brewers pushed back later and made the finish uncomfortable. It also made for one of those plays that tells the whole story in a flash: outfield defense matters, and this one changed the game.
The Cubs still sit 5.5 games behind the Brewers in the division race, so nobody is pretending this solved everything. But beating Milwaukee in a series like this, with the odds stacked the way they were, was plenty satisfying.
And the calendar doesn’t give Chicago much time to breathe. The Cubs are headed into another important week at Wrigley Field, where they’ll host the San Diego Padres and St.
Louis Cardinals. Both teams are chasing the Cubs in the Wild Card race, with Chicago sitting two games ahead of the Padres and 1.5 games ahead of the Cardinals.
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For Cubs fans, the eye-catching part is how neatly it fits the way Jed Hoyer has run the front office for years. Chicago has long been built around flexibility rather than the kind of sprawling commitments that define the top of the market, which is why names like Kyle Tucker, Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto never felt like realistic fits in the first place. If this proposal ever becomes real, it could make the Cubs preferred path look a lot less like a choice and a lot more like the new rules of the game. [Read more 🡒]