this double, his second hit of the game [VIDEO]<\/a>.<\/p>\nKevin Alc\u00e1ntara ran for McGuire. Busch flied to left, but Alc\u00e1ntara could not advance. An infield hit by Nico Hoerner put Alc\u00e1ntara on third with one out, so the tying run was 90 feet away. Unfortunately, there it stayed when Happ struck out and Mois\u00e9s Ballesteros grounded out.<\/p>\n
Should Nico have tried to steal second at some point there? The Cubs\u2019 pace of steals has slowed down again \u2014 just nine attempts in their last nine games and only five successful steals. This offense seems to do better when they run, at least a bit.<\/p>\n
Still, down only one run heading to the bottom of the eighth seemed possible for another comeback, that is, until Tyler Stephenson smashed a two-run homer off the usually-reliable Andrew Kittredge and that was basically that, as the Cubs went down scoreless in the ninth, despite a two-out double by Matt Shaw.<\/p>\n
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Here are some postgame comments from Craig Counsell:<\/p>\n
With the Padres defeating the White Sox 7-3 in Chicago Saturday evening, the Cubs\u2019 magic number to clinch the NL\u2019s top wild card spot remained at 4. It also means the earliest the Cubs can clinch is Tuesday evening at home vs. the Mets. You might say not to worry, but look what\u2019s happening to the Tigers right now \u2014 they are only a game ahead of the Guardians in the AL Central after being 9.5 games up with 16 remaining. Cleveland has won 10 straight while Detroit has lost eight of nine.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think it will come to anything like that, as the Cubs head home after Sunday and they are 46-27 at Wrigley Field this year. Still, nothing is clinched until it\u2019s clinched, which sounds like a clich\u00e9 but really isn\u2019t. The Cubs really need to stop this losing streak right here. This now stands as the Cubs\u2019 fifth three-game losing streak this year \u2014 but second this month. Enough, now. Also, the Reds now stand just one game behind the Mets for the final wild card spot and Cincinnati holds the tiebreaker. So the last week of the season could be about to get interesting, if things aren\u2019t interesting enough already.<\/p>\n
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The Cubs will look to salvage the final game of this four-game series Sunday afternoon at GABP, which is also their final regular-season road game of 2025. Jameson Taillon will start for the Cubs and Andrew Abbott goes for Cincinnati. Game time Sunday is 12:40 p.m. CT and TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network (and MLB Network outside the Cubs and Reds market territories).<\/p>\n
The BCB game preview will post at 10:30 a.m. CT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Okay, this is getting at least a bit concerning. Maybe it\u2019s just the hot, humid weather in Cincinnati,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":243974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[19406,34482,62487,50270,49011,960,10595,13593,20167,16075,1449,32978,129985,5604,5439,63313,22893,8321,30300,5606,1266,13715,10596,8754,5056,62,109499,95562,25574,34481,19895,67,132,68,5390,4253,69804],"class_list":{"0":"post-243973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-aaron-civale","9":"tag-andrew-abbott","10":"tag-andrew-kittredge","11":"tag-anthony-rizzo","12":"tag-billy-williams","13":"tag-chicago","14":"tag-cincinnati","15":"tag-cleveland","16":"tag-cubs","17":"tag-dansby-swanson","18":"tag-detroit","19":"tag-drew-pomeranz","20":"tag-fred-mcgriff","21":"tag-ian-happ","22":"tag-jameson-taillon","23":"tag-javier-assad","24":"tag-javier-baez","25":"tag-kyle-schwarber","26":"tag-matt-shaw","27":"tag-michael-busch","28":"tag-mlb","29":"tag-nico-hoerner","30":"tag-reds","31":"tag-reese-mcguire","32":"tag-spencer-steer","33":"tag-sports","34":"tag-the-cubs","35":"tag-the-mets","36":"tag-the-reds","37":"tag-tj-friedl","38":"tag-tyler-stephenson","39":"tag-united-states","40":"tag-unitedstates","41":"tag-us","42":"tag-white-sox","43":"tag-willi-castro","44":"tag-zack-littell"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}