{"id":812899,"date":"2026-09-24T07:27:38","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T07:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/812899\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T07:27:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T07:27:38","slug":"chicago-cubs-again-fail-to-clinch-playoff-spot-with-3-2-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/812899\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago Cubs again fail to clinch playoff spot with 3-2 loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kyle Stowers homered and the Miami Marlins denied the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/2026\/09\/23\/chicago-cubs-boston-red-sox-doubleheader\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chicago Cubs<\/a> a chance to clinch a playoff berth for the second straight night with a 3-2 victory Wednesday at Wrigley Field.<\/p>\n<p>Dansby Swanson drove in both runs for the Cubs, who needed a win over the Marlins or the Arizona Diamondbacks to lose to the Colorado Rockies to secure an NL wild-card berth.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Mack\u2019s groundout brought home Augustin Ramirez with the go-ahead run in the seventh and the Marlins retired the next nine Cubs batters to win their second straight game after dropping three to the San Diego Padres.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/2026\/09\/23\/photos-miami-marlins-3-chicago-cubs-2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Photos: Miami Marlins 3, Chicago Cubs 2<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Stowers hit his 21st home run, a two-run shot, off Kevin Gausman in the top of the sixth to break a scoreless tie. The Cubs evened things in the bottom of the inning when Swanson laced a broken-bat single into left field to bring home a pair of runs.<\/p>\n<p>Cade Gibson (6-2), the second of four Marlins relievers, struck out two in the seventh and Sandy Alcantara worked the ninth for his second save.<\/p>\n<p>Reliever Ryan Rolison (9-2) took the loss.<\/p>\n<p>Gausman struck out seven and allowed two runs, six hits and a walk in the first 5 2\/3 innings. The Marlins\u2019 Ryan Gusto allowed six hits and two walks while striking out five in 5 1\/3 innings.<\/p>\n<p>Pete Crow-Armstrong needed a stolen base to become the seventh player to join the MLB 40-40 club but went 0 for 3 with a walk and remained at 45 home runs and 39 steals.<\/p>\n<p>Up next<\/p>\n<p>The Cubs will start LHP Matthew Boyd (9-5, 4.06 ERA) for Thursday afternoon\u2019s regular-season home finale. RHP Tyler Phillips (5-6, 3.45 ERA) is scheduled to start for the Marlins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyle Stowers homered and the Miami Marlins denied the Chicago Cubs a chance to clinch a playoff berth&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2395],"tags":[5,24,733,389,1388,1816,778,58,4171,4,256,2305,27241,738],"class_list":["post-812899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami-marlins","tag-baseball","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-dansby-swanson","tag-kevin-gausman","tag-kyle-stowers","tag-marlins","tag-miami","tag-miami-marlins","tag-miamimarlins","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-baseball","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-national-league-wild-card","tag-wrigley-field"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117324837249252627","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}