Another Wrigley ‘W’: Brown’s improvement plan helps send Cubs to 10th straight home win
Enough Cubs were the best versions of themselves Saturday to stretch their home win streak to 10 in a row, the team's longest since 2008.
The Cubs beat Arizona 2-0 at Wrigley Field thanks mostly to Shota Imanaga's 7 shutout innings. He allowed 4 hits and 1 walk with 5 strikeouts.
Ian Happ delivered a pseudo-cycle with a walk, double, triple and home run. He accounted for both runs with a solo homer in the second inning, despite a strong breeze blowing in off the lake. He added a one-out triple in the eighth and scored on Seiya Suzuki's sacrifice fly.
“I hadn't hit the ball very hard left-handed for a little stretch there,” said Happ, a switch-hitter. “So hitting a few balls hard was nice. They came off three different pitches too, which gives me a lot of confidence.”
Dansby Swanson piled up 9 assists at shortstop, which was a bit ironic, since teammates Happ, Nico Hoerner and Pete Crow-Armstrong received their 2025 Gold Glove Awards before the game for being the best fielder at their positions. Swanson didn't get one, though he's won two in the past.
Finally, one player who's made an important step forward is pitcher Ben Brown. He pitched two perfect innings of relief to earn his second career save. The former starter has thrown 14 consecutive innings without allowing an earned run, dating back to April 8 at Tampa Bay.
“I'll go back to last October when Ben sat in my office and had a very clear plan about how he was going to get better,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “And I think he very much executed that. We've got ourselves a confident pitcher right now.”
Brown, 26, started 23 games in his first two big-league seasons, but his ERA ballooned to 5.92 last year. He probably will return to the starting rotation at some point, but for now he's become a valuable multi-inning reliever.
After Saturday's game, Brown added some personal insight to the improvement plan he gave Counsell at the end of the 2025 playoffs.
“I wrote it down,” Brown said. “I knew exactly what I wanted to do. There was a little movement thing, with the arm angle, I wanted to get better at. I wanted to just stay more in plane. And I wanted (to add) a sinker and a changeup. And I did that.
“Whatever that was, it was just my plan. I felt like I didn't execute well against right-handed hitters last year when I should be dominating against them. And I think lefties, with how good my stuff is, I just needed another wrinkle.”
Brown has slowly worked the changeup into his arsenal during the past three years, and he uses it almost exclusively against left-handed hitters. He hasn't allowed a hit on a changeup this season, according to Statcast.
The sinker he developed from scratch last December. Thanks to all the data analysis available, Brown said it only took a few bullpen sessions to get it to work. He's thrown the sinker 24.4% of the time this year, almost always against righties.
Then the knuckle curve, always his go-to pitch, has been even more effective, with a .135 batting average allowed, down from .252 last season. Statcast rates Brown's breaking pitches in the 97th percentile in MLB.
“I was very up front about what I wanted to work on,” he said. “I obviously saw there were a lot of problems and a lot of flaws in my game and my mentality and me as a man -- everything in general just needed some work.
“I definitely had a plan. I had a nice little send-down to Triple-A in September to help me kind of go over some things.”
There was a hint of sarcasm in that last line, but he come back to throw two scoreless innings in the division series against Milwaukee.
The Cubs (21-12) should activate closer Daniel Palencia (lat strain) on Sunday or Monday. He hit 102 mph in a Triple-A rehab outing at St. Paul on Friday night.
Hoerner missed Saturday's game with neck tightness but could be back at second base Sunday. Hoerner left Friday's game in the second inning with the neck issue.