ATLANTA — Cubs players, scattered throughout the field, strode off the field with heavy feet as the Braves swarmed Ozzie Albies, their scrum bouncing from the infield dirt into left field.
The fireworks above Truist Park punctuated the Braves extra-inning walk-off win. But for the Cubs, the 6-5 loss in the 10th inning was also a blow to their postseason chances.
Soon after the game slipped through the Cubs’ fingers, the Marlins pulled off a win over the Mets in the second game of a doubleheader, and the Cubs lost their grip in the third National League Wild Card spot. Record-wise, the Cubs and Marlins are even, but Miami owns the tiebreaker.
“We were 10 games under [.500] and really far out of it at one point,” left fielder Ian Happ said. “So, to be in this spot isn’t too bad. … We’ve been in all these games playing really good baseball, a lot of stuff not going our way, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to stop playing.”
Against the Braves, the Cubs have lost back-to-back one-run games and have one more contest in Atlanta before finishing the regular season in Milwaukee.
“Whenever I see a great team like this, I actually look at it as inspirational,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said Wednesday afternoon. “It’s like, OK, that’s the standard. That’s the best team in baseball right now. … I don’t think anyone would argue with that. And to beat them over the long haul, you’ve got to be better than that, and that’s a good standard to have.”
Over the last two days, with injuries to the Braves’ rotation and the Cubs’ bullpen canceling each other out, Atlanta played with steadier hands.
“The outs that we lost in the field both tonight and yesterday defensively, obviously those sting,” Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner said. “But as an offense – even though we did score some runs tonight – those middle innings, we felt like as a group, we could have put some more up there.”
The Cubs took a 3-1 lead in the first three innings. But both teams put up a series of zeros until the seventh.
When Cubs starter Jameson Taillon jogged out to the mound in the seventh to face the heart of the Braves’ order, Ozzie Albies’ first-inning homer still stood as the only run Taillon had allowed.
Taillon walked Austin Riley to open the seventh, then induced Matt Olson to hit a grounder, which found a hole through the infield. Marcell Ozuna, stepped up to the plate with runners on first and third.
With a 3-2 count, Taillon located a cutter in the corner of the strike zone, low and outside. Ozuna hit it on the ground to Hoerner, who fielded it cleanly. Then Hoerner skied his flip over shortstop Dansby Swanson. Riley scored, and Olson and Ozuna were safe at second and first.
Taillon described the play as: “a little bit of a defensive miscue from a couple of the best defensive baseball players I’ve ever seen.”
It also marked the end of Taillon’s six-plus inning start. Left-hander Drew Smyly took over, retiring the next three batters in order. But the Braves had forced a crack, and in a close game, against the Cubs’ beleaguered bullpen, they gradually pried it open.
After some back and forth – and the first appearance of Cubs reliever Mark Leiter Jr. in a week – the teams went into the 10th inning, introducing the automatic extra-innings runner to the mix. The Cubs took the lead in the top of the inning on a sacrifice fly from Happ.
Then Cubs rookie Daniel Palencia took the mound in the highest-pressure situations of his young career when factoring in playoff implications.
Braves MVP candidate Ronals Acuña Jr. hit an RBI single and then swiped his 70th bag of the season. He pulled the base out of the ground and held it above his head for a raucous crowd. The Braves played a congratulatory video. Then Albies drove him in with a line drive to right field for the walk-off victory.
