Cubs finish home stretch with win and get promising news on Tucker
With Sunday's 7-3 victory over Cincinnati, the Cubs moved to 15 games over .500 and completed a successful stretch when the schedule finally brought teams with losing records.
They don't need any bad news to stall the momentum. And as the Cubs packed their bags for a nine-game road trip, it looked like everything would be OK with Kyle Tucker's injured finger.
Tucker left the game in the fifth inning with a jammed right ring finger, giving way to Vidal Brujan in right field. The injury happened when Tucker slid into second base during a caught-stealing in the first inning. He took two more at-bats, and got a double, before exiting.
“I feel all right,” Tucker said after the game. “I mean, it's just a little jammed there, a little swollen, but obviously we've got our off day (Monday). So hopefully, it feels a little bit better once we get to Washington.”
The Cubs said X-rays were negative on the finger. Tucker couldn't really explain what happened on the play.
“It kind of happened pretty fast,” he said. “My hand just hit the ground kind of weird, kind of got caught under me. I was just hoping it went away, tried to just grind though it, but it was kind of hurting. Took a precautionary route of coming out of the game.”
The Cubs took control with 4 runs in the third inning, clubbing 3 extra-base hits and five total against Reds starter Nick Martinez. Michael Busch hit a 2-run homer, while Tucker and Dansby Swanson doubled, and Pete Crow-Armstrong contributed an RBI single for the game's first run.
In the seventh, two Reds errors set the stage for Nico Hoerner's 2-run single that stretched the lead to 7-2. Hoerner and Crow-Armstrong both had 3 hits Sunday, while Busch finished with 3 RBI.
Starting pitcher Jameson Taillon was rolling until two outs into the sixth inning, when he walked Santiago Espinal to cap a 10-pitch at-bat. Elly De La Cruz followed by yanking a long home run just inside the right-field foul pole before it landed on Sheffield Avenue.
“I'm OK challenging guys in the zone in that situation (with a 5-0 lead),” Taillon said. “If it were a tie game, I probably would have thrown a curveball or a backdoor cutter or something there.”
Taillon (5-3) finished that inning and faced one batter in the seventh before departing. He said his sweeper wasn't working well, but found other pitches to get the job done.
“At least now my curveball's a lot better than it has been as a Cub,” he said. “So you can't have it all. That's kind of the perks of throwing six pitches and also a downside is it's hard to maintain all of them all the time.”
The Cubs went 14-4 during their 18 games against teams with losing records, which began on May 12 against Miami. The upcoming road trip includes Detroit, which has the best record in MLB, and Philadelphia, one of the best in the NL. Washington was 28-31 through Sunday, so the sub-.500 stretch will continue for one more series.
“In spring training, I started to realize how good of a team we had collectively,” Tucker said. “I'm glad we've had this start so far.
“(Former Astros manager) Dusty Baker, he would always say, 'If you're going to show up, you might as well win,'” Tucker said. “You don't want to just show up just to go through the motions or lose games.”