{"id":98251,"date":"2025-06-12T12:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T12:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/98251\/"},"modified":"2025-06-12T12:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T12:18:08","slug":"cubs-takeaways-what-we-learned-as-phillies-win-series-to-cap-long-road-trip-marquee-sports-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/98251\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs takeaways: What we learned as Phillies win series to cap long road trip | Marquee Sports Network"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOX SCORE<\/a><\/p>\n

The Cubs haven\u2019t played in Chicago in some time. Not since June 1, as a matter of fact.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve travelled to Washington, Detroit and then Philadelphia, over a nine-game road trip conducted without an off day. They needed a victory over the Phillies on Wednesday afternoon to finish that specific stretch with a winning record.<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

The Cubs (41-27) dropped this one by a 7-2 final score to the Phillies (39-29) at Citizens Bank Park and finished a long road trip with a 4-5 record.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at what we learned from Wednesday\u2019s result:<\/p>\n

Troubling road-trip trend<\/p>\n

The Cubs lost five games on this road trip, with a common theme connecting them. They didn\u2019t win a low-scoring ball game. They scored three or fewer runs in all of their road losses, including this one on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The Cubs offense exploded in their four wins, tallying at least six runs in each of them. That\u2019s not to say the pitching staff was all bad on this trip. The bullpen was aces, and the Cubs received some solid starts.<\/p>\n

We can consider this an aberration at this point, but good teams must find a way to squeak out wins when the offense isn\u2019t dominant. The Cubs have been able to do that at times, just not on this road trip.<\/p>\n

Cubs fall victim to the \u2018K\u2018<\/p>\n

The Cubs don\u2019t strike out a ton despite having some power hitters throughout the lineup. They\u2019re just above the middle of the pack<\/a> in total strikeouts, but their rate was sky high against Phillies starter Jes\u00fas Luzardo.<\/p>\n

The Cubs struck out 10 times against the hard-throwing 27-year-old lefty<\/a>, who had some great stuff on a hot Wednesday afternoon in Philadelphia. He also didn\u2019t walk anyone.<\/p>\n

It was the highest total of the season against the Cubs. Jack Flaherty struck out nine on June 8, another loss where the Cubs struggled to score.<\/p>\n

Luzardo was particularly impactful early in the game, with seven strikeouts in the first three innings. He had three in a row during the top of the second after consecutive singles by Carson Kelly and Justin Turner.<\/p>\n

The Cubs didn\u2019t have many scoring opportunities during Luzardo\u2019s six innings of work, with just one run scored during that span.<\/p>\n

Ben Brown\u2019s first-inning issues resurface<\/p>\n

Ben Brown hasn\u2019t fared well in the first inning of his starts. He had allowed 14 first-inning runs<\/a> entering Wednesday\u2019s outing and gave up three more in the opening frame at Citizens Bank Park.<\/p>\n

Craig Counsell used an opener on a May 31 outing where he was awesome, throwing six shutout innings after replacing Drew Pomeranz. Brown got the start again on June 6 in Detroit and might\u2019ve had his best outing of the season, allowing only two earned runs with seven strikeouts and just one walk.<\/p>\n

The first-inning issues popped back up in Philadelphia, putting the Cubs in an early hole. Brown\u2019s outing didn\u2019t get much better with time. He got in trouble several times after that and gave up six runs over the course of 5.2 innings of work.<\/p>\n

Brown has been dominant at times, unsuccessful at others. He seemed to have some trouble locating his fastball, which led to some hard-hit extra-base hits.<\/p>\n

Counsell had Brown go back out for the fifth inning with a big deficit, likely in the interest of saving bullpen innings with four games ahead before a Monday off day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOX SCORE The Cubs haven\u2019t played in Chicago in some time. Not since June 1, as a matter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,734,138,24,4245,161,4,25],"class_list":{"0":"post-98251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-ben-brown","10":"tag-chicago","11":"tag-chicago-cubs","12":"tag-chicagocubs","13":"tag-cubs","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-philadelphia-phillies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114670358105383389","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98251","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=98251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}