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Chicago Cubs bats are silent again in a 7-0 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, capping a 2-4 trip: ‘That’s baseball’

paul sullivan, chicago tribune
·5 min read

After Willson Contreras had the biggest hit of the young season for the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday night, a game-winning home run against a Milwaukee Brewers team that has treated him like a human pin cushion for years, he told their fans to “shut up” and delivered a message.

“I think they picked the wrong guy to throw at,” Contreras said. “But that was a message sent and, man, there’s a lot more games coming up. Who knows what’s going to happen?”

If you were trying to promote a rematch, there was no one else you would rather have talking smack to the Cubs’ division rivals than their emotional catcher.

But Contreras sat out Wednesday’s 7-0 loss to the Brewers at American Family Field, a decision manager David Ross planned out beforehand but one that made little sense considering the blast of high-octane energy Willson provided with his monstrous homer and taunting of Brewers fans on his trip around the bases Tuesday night.

The Cubs wound up with four hits off ace Corbin Burnes and the Brewers bullpen Wednesday, striking out 12 times and ending their first trip with a 2-4 record.

“That’s baseball,” losing pitcher Jake Arrieta said. “We’re going to look bad. We’re going to look great.”

We’ll just have to take Arrieta’s word for it, because 11 games in the Cubs are 5-7, hitting a major-league worst .163 and averaging 2.7 per game.

After a memorable win like Tuesday night’s comeback, taking the series from the Brewers would’ve gone a long way toward buying the Cubs some time with their angst-ridden fans. Cubs President Jed Hoyer said Wednesday that Contreras’s home run was “a nice moment, certainly given a week that’s been really frustrating” because of COVID-19 related roster moves.

Contreras’s bat flip and putting his index finger to his lips to silence fans were spontaneous displays of joy that could’ve provided a spark to a struggling team. Hoyer gave the celebration his seal of approval.

“The worst thing we could ever do is take the emotion out of the game,” he said.

But there was virtually no emotion on display from the Cubs on Wednesday as the Brewers took a two-run lead off Arrieta in the first inning and never looked back.

The Cubs might be last in hitting, but they’re first in pained expressions while trudging back to the dugout after strikeouts. They’ve scored 13 runs in six games against the Brewers with a .129 average, 61 strikeouts and only 23 hits.

“Things tend to balance themselves out over the course of a six-month season,” Arrieta said. “We just so happen to run into one of these stretches right out of the gate. Not ideal, obviously. But it’s going to happen.. There has been frustration, but it’s not going to do us any good to dwell on it too long or take it for more than what it is.”

Before the game, Ross agreed that Contreras’ heroics were a big lift for the team. But with Thursday’s off day he decided to give Contreras and Kris Bryant back-to-back days of rest. The Cubs lineup against Burnes, the game’s hottest pitcher, included only one player batting over .162 — Javier Baez with a .220 average and 43% strikeout rate.

Baez struck out three more times, and the Cubs failed to string together two hits in an inning, a recurring theme in 2021.

Do the Cubs need to show the kind of emotion they played with Tuesday to be at their best?

“We’ve been scuffling a little bit, and the emotion can kick-start us,” Ross said. “I don’t know if we need that emotion nightly. But momentum is real, so for sure. I thought that was a really big win (Tuesday) night, going into a game facing the other team’s ace (in Brandon Woodruff), and your ace (Kyle Hendricks), you have to scratch him late to go with your long guy in the bullpen (Alec Mills).

“Odds are not in your favor. The fact you win thatgame was big, and that was a huge momentum boost for us.”

But that momentum boost ended in the bottom of the first when Jackie Bradley Jr. doubled leading off and came home two batters later on Travis Shaw’s RBI single. The Brewers added a run on Omar Narvaez’s sacrifice fly and made it 3-0 in the third on Shaw’s home run.

Arrieta was lifted after 84 pitches and five innings, and Shelby Miller, called up from the alternate site in South Bend, Ind., and making his first major-league appearance since June 2019, let the game get out of hand, allowing two singles and three walks, forcing home two runs in the four-run sixth. Miller was removed without retiring a batter.

On the bright side, the Cubs don’t have to face the Brewers again until April 23, the start of their third series. And everyone took pains to say they didn’t believe the Brewers were intentionally throwing at Contreras. Hoyer noted “a lot of teams try to pound him in, the Brewers obviously have hit him a lot,” adding there was “understandable frustration” on Contreras’ part.

“The best part of it was he got his revenge in the right way,” Hoyer said. “That’s what you should do.”

Yet the message was mixed. The team’s official Twitter account posted a video Wednesday featuring all the times Contreras has been hit by Brewers pitchers. “Unbelievable,” the tweet said.

That’s also an apt description of the Chicago Cubs offense to date.

Unbelievable.