One day, Cubs hits will ring out all over Wrigley Field. One day, Cubs home runs will fly one after one into the iconic Wrigley bleachers. One day, the Cubs will win a home game by seven or eight or nine runs.
Today was not that day.
It was, though, a good day in the end, as Ian Happ’s walkoff single in the 10th inning gave the Cubs a 3-2 win over the Pirates, and they took the series three games to one. You’re thinking, “This should not be this hard,” yet I remind you that the Pittsburgh Pirates are a major league baseball team with some decent pitching, and they, too, are trying to win.
Anyway.
There was quite a bit of offense in the first inning. The Pirates turned singles by Oneil Cruz, Nick Gonzales and Spencer Horwitz into a 2-0 lead off Colin Rea.
But the Cubs came right back with a pair of runs of their own in the bottom of the inning. Happ led off with a walk and stole second. He took third on a ground out by Pete Crow-Armstrong, and another ground out by Seiya Suzuki made it 2-1 Pirates [VIDEO].
Michael Busch followed that with a double that bounced into the left-field stands, and scored on this single by Dansby Swanson [VIDEO].
That inning took almost 30 minutes to complete. It felt like this was going to be one of those long, dragged-out, back-and-forth affairs.
As you now know, it was not. After the teams traded those two-run first innings, there was a whole lot of nothing. Rea settled down and allowed only two more baserunners through the sixth inning, completing a very good outing with one walk and four strikeouts.
Here’s more on Rea’s afternoon [VIDEO].
But Mitch Keller also settled down after the first, and after a third-inning single by Busch, Keller retired 10 Cubs in a row — and then reliever Isaac Mattson put down the Cubs in order in the seventh and eighth.
Meanwhile, Caleb Thielbar and Génesis Cabrera also threw scoreless innings in the seventh and eighth, with one walk each.
Thus that 2-2 score was still the same entering the ninth. Ryan Pressly struck out the first two hitters he faced, and appeared to get Adam Frazier on a ground ball to Busch.
But the umpires said, “Nope, that’s a foul ball.” [VIDEO]
The Cubs had left the field. So, they came back, got into game mode again, and on the next pitch Pressly got Frazier to fly to left to end the inning.
In the bottom of the ninth, the first two Cubs were routine outs. Thus from that third-inning single, 18 Cubs had gone down in order.
But then Swanson singled and Nico Hoerner doubled, but not deep enough to score Swanson.
This is when Craig Counsell puzzled me. Justin Turner was the due hitter. This seemed a perfect chance to pinch-hit Kyle Tucker, who didn’t start the game.
Turner took the at-bat and grounded to third to send the game to extras.
Chris Flexen, who’s been excellent all year out of the pen for the Cubs, entered to throw the 10th. The first two outs were a routine grounder to short and a fly to deep right.
Then Nico made an outstanding play to end the inning [VIDEO].
Nico Hoerner is going to win another Gold Glove this year, methinks.
In the bottom of the 10th, Counsell sent Vidal Bruján to run for Turner to start the inning. Then he sent Tucker to bat for Reese McGuire. So of course the Pirates intentionally passed him — predictable.
With Jon Berti at bat and the Pirates expecting a bunt, Bruján and Tucker pulled off a double steal [VIDEO].
Berti’s at-bat continued, and he struck out for the first out of the inning.
Happ made sure that was the final out of the game with his walkoff single [VIDEO].
Here’s Happ on his walkoff hit [VIDEO].
And here’s a whole bunch of info on Cubs walkoffs from BCB’s JohnW53:
According to my research, that is the Cubs’ 994th walk-off since 1876 and 896th of the Modern Era.
It is the 953rd at home and the 791st at Wrigley Field.
That was the Cub’ 100th walk-off win over the Pirates, their fewest vs. any of the seven pre-expansion National League teams. The next fewest is 103 vs. the Cardinals. The most is 119 vs. the Phillies.
And more from John on the Cubs’ lack of scoring recently:
This is the Cubs’ 217th streak since 1901 of at least five games in which they have scored no more than three runs.It is only the 18th of those in which the Cubs have had a winning record — the 12th in which they went 3-2. The last of those was May 29-June 3, 2023. The only others in the Expansion Era were in 1979, 1992, 1998 and 2013.
In the four-game series, the teams batted in 74 half innings. They scored in 12 of them, producing a total of 16 runs: Cubs 9, Pirates 7.
Regardless, the Cubs got enough runs to win three of the four games, in the end, that’s what matters. (But please, Cubs… any time you’d like to start scoring bunches of runs at home, that’d be fine with all of us.) As Happ says in the clip above, kudos to the bullpen for keeping the games close.
A bit more on the run scoring:
Cubs have averaged 2.89 runs per game in their last 9 home games.
And they’re 7-2 in those games.
— Christopher Kamka (@ckamka) June 15, 2025
Make it 8-2 in last 10 home games, with 2.90 runs/game
— Christopher Kamka (@ckamka) June 15, 2025
The Brewers won Sunday and so took three of four from the Cardinals. The Cubs thus remain 5½ games ahead of Milwaukee and seven in front of St. Louis and Cincinnati. The Reds won in Detroit Sunday afternoon.
The Cubs have Monday off and will welcome the Brewers to Wrigley Field for a three-game series beginning Tuesday evening. Ben Brown is scheduled to start for the Cubs and the Brewers will counter with Chad Patrick. Game time Tuesday is 7:05 p.m. CT and TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network.