The part of Wednesday night that actually mattered happened before most fans in Milwaukee had finished their first beer. Christian Yelich hit a three-run homer off Kevin Gausman in the first inning, and the Brewers never trailed again. Everything after that, including the five-run ninth that got Cubs fans off the couch, was a team trying to un-ring a bell that had already been rung.
The real story of this 8-6 Brewers win is that Milwaukee never needed the ninth-inning rally at all. Jackson Chourio added a homer in the second, off a first-pitch splitter left far too high in the zone, and William Contreras went deep too. By the time the Cubs got their only real look of the night against starter Logan Henderson, they were already staring at an 8-1 deficit heading into the ninth.
Henderson deserves the bulk of the credit for turning this into a laugher. He retired the first nine Cubs he faced in order, didn't allow an earned run, and struck out six before handing things to the bullpen. Brewers writers have started floating him as a co-ace behind Freddy Peralta. I won't go that far off one start, but a pitcher who can shut down a division rival like that in a sweep-clinching game has earned the conversation.
As for the ninth: four walks from Brandon Sproat opened the door, Abner Uribe came in and gave some of it back, and Michael Conforto's two-run double made it interesting. Chicago got the tying run to the plate, and it died there, on a strikeout by a rookie. I understand the instinct to call that fight admirable. I'd call it a footnote. A loss is a loss, and this one completed a sweep in which the Cubs also blew a late lead on Monday and let a ninth-inning strike-away game slip into extras on Tuesday. That's a pattern, not bad luck three times in a row.
Kevin Gausman, who took the loss, said after the game that his team doesn't have time to sulk and needs to stay confident. Fair enough, but confidence isn't really the issue. The issue is that this stretch, coming during a run in which Chicago has won just two of eight series, is exactly the kind of gut-punch a team can't afford this late in the year. The sweep briefly knocked the Cubs out of the top NL Wild Card spot in the days right after this game, even though they've since fought back into a share of it. Nobody should be writing the Cubs off. But nobody should be pretending Wednesday was some morale-building near-miss, either. It was Milwaukee's game from the first pitch, and the ninth inning was just the Cubs finding out how much traffic they were actually stuck in.
