Instead of waging a knock-down, drag-out series, the Cubs have been embarrassed by the small-market Brewers in a stadium that Chicago fans like to call \u201cWrigley North.\u201d But when facing baseball\u2019s best team during the regular season \u2014 a group refreshed and focused after a first-round bye \u2014 that convenience factor is nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n
Poaching Counsell when he became a free agent after the 2023 season did not stop the Milwaukee machine. Carrying a substantially higher payroll has not closed the gap in the NL Central. Waiting until next year is a concept that Cubs fans are intimately familiar with by now.<\/p>\n
Silence blanketed the visiting clubhouse when the doors opened to the media late Monday night. Shota Imanaga, the Japanese lefty who usually pitches with so much joy and conviction, stood at his locker, searching for answers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ruined the game,\u201d Imanaga said through an interpreter. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of frustration with myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2239660623-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Handed an early lead, Imanaga coughed it up shortly after, exiting after 2 2\/3 innings with his Cubs trailing. (Michael Reaves \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Imanaga looked flustered when Counsell visited the mound without the pitcher\u2019s interpreter, buying time until reliever Daniel Palencia was ready to take over in the third inning. The scouting concerns that followed Imanaga\u2019s years in Nippon Professional Baseball have popped up again at the worst possible time.<\/p>\n
Handed a three-run lead before he threw his first pitch, Imanaga gave it right back in the first inning when Andrew Vaughn launched an 83.7 mph sweeper into the left-field seats. William Contreras hammered a 90.7 mph fastball for another home run in the third inning, putting the Brewers ahead and leaving the Cubs exposed.<\/p>\n
As a team built on solid pitching and Gold Glove defense, the Cubs have come up short in both those phases of the game and at the most important time of the season.<\/p>\n
The offense, meanwhile, simply hasn\u2019t put enough pressure on Milwaukee\u2019s pitchers. Outside of Michael Busch\u2019s leadoff home run in Game 1 and Seiya Suzuki\u2019s three-run homer 16 pitches into Game 2, the Cubs have been held scoreless in 14 of the 16 other innings.<\/p>\n
The Brewers beat the Cubs with a traditional ace, Freddy Peralta, in Game 1, and then deployed six different pitchers to shut down Chicago\u2019s offense once Game 2 opener Aaron Ashby exited. In starting Justin Turner over Busch to counter the left-handed Ashby at the start of the game, Counsell referred to the 40-year-old clubhouse leader as \u201c\u2018The Godfather\u2019 of playoff experience for our guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just about trusting the process, staying in your routines,\u201d Turner said before Game 2. \u201cWhen you get into the playoffs, everything seems to be amplified a little bit \u2014 media, TV (cameras) everywhere, interviews. Things feel a lot bigger than in the regular season, so it\u2019s finding ways to slow things down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/p>\n
The Brewers are just faster, from Jacob Misiorowski\u2019s triple-digit velocity to Jackson Chourio\u2019s bat speed to an overall style of play that emphasizes swing-and-miss stuff and athleticism all over the field. As the NLDS shifts to Wrigleyville, all the Cubs can do is fall back on what got them to this point.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re emotional about it, that\u2019s not going to help anything,\u201d Jameson Taillon, who\u2019s lined up to start Wednesday\u2019s elimination game, said. \u201cIt\u2019s, \u2018What can we do to win a game today?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cFor hitters, it\u2019s prepare the right way and know what the pitcher\u2019s going to throw. For us, it\u2019s making sure we\u2019re taking care of our weight room work and our side work, and not getting lost in the emotion of where the series is at. You still have to do your job.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cubs can\u2019t completely reinvent themselves during Tuesday\u2019s off-day workout at Wrigley Field. The goal, All-Star center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said, is to not change everything or try to do anything extra. After going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in Game 2, he stood in front of his locker and insisted the Cubs can \u201cabsolutely\u201d come back in this playoff series.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d be a fool if I was here and didn\u2019t think so,\u201d Crow-Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
The screens in the clubhouse listed a 12:10 a.m. bus back to Chicago. Right now, the Cubs can only hope that they will come back to Milwaukee for a Game 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to take it one game at a time,\u201d Ian Happ said. \u201cYou can\u2019t look at it as this daunting three games. You have to take it as win tomorrow. That\u2019s the only thing that we can do as a group, is just win on Wednesday and go on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILWAUKEE \u2014 The construct for this particular Cubs team is that every day should feel the same. That\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":283717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1271,1266,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-283716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-chicago-cubs","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115332286195305416","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283716","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=283716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}