Forget the radar gun for a second. Forget that Jacob Misiorowski was throwing bowling balls at triple digits. The number that should keep Cubs fans up at night isn't 104.5 mph. It's two: two straight nights, two identical 4-3 losses, two late leads handed back to the Milwaukee Brewers. Both times, the same guy was standing on the mound when it slipped away.
On Tuesday night, the Cubs did the hard part. They loaded the bases in the ninth against Milwaukee closer Trevor Megill and got Carson Kelly's two-run double to go up 3-1. That's the kind of lead that's supposed to be safe. All Jacob Webb had to do was finish it.
He retired the first two batters, which is exactly how these things lull you to sleep. Then Christian Yelich pinch-hit and singled. Then Jackson Chourio turned on an 0-1 pitch and drove it over the left-field wall to tie the game, his fourth hit of the night and a career-high 22nd home run of the season. In extras, the Brewers loaded the bases again and Luis Lara ended it with an RBI single.
The blame here belongs on Webb, not on the Milwaukee heroics. Chourio is a stud, and that swing was huge. But good players do that to bullpens you can't trust, and right now Chicago's bullpen is one you can't trust. Webb followed the exact same script the night before, when the Cubs also lost 4-3 after blowing a late lead. Same opponent, same result, two nights running. That doesn't happen by accident.
Misiorowski, for what it's worth, was electric in the loss for Milwaukee: 6 1/3 innings, nine strikeouts, and an ERA that dropped to a big-league best 1.95. He touched 104.5 mph and threw 46 pitches at 100 or harder. He's now up to 1,010 pitches at 100-plus this season. MLB researcher Sarah Langs noted the previous single-season high for any team since tracking began in 2008 was 673, by the 2018 Cardinals, all thrown by Jordan Hicks. One pitcher just blew past a whole team's record. That's a wild number, and on a different night it would be the whole story.
But it's a footnote here, because the Cubs got to him anyway. Michael Busch singled home a run in the first, the only run Chicago scored off Misiorowski all night. They found a way to lead late anyway. And they lost anyway.
The stakes are worth sorting out, because they get muddled. The NL Central isn't the issue. As of Tuesday's game, Milwaukee had pushed its division lead to nine games over Chicago, and that race is done. The Cubs aren't catching them. What's still live is the wild-card seeding. Around this series, Chicago was in a tight fight with Philadelphia for the top NL wild-card spot.
That's why these back-to-back gut-punches matter. A blown save in a division you've already lost is annoying. A blown save that shows your closer can't hold a two-run October lead against a good lineup is a real problem. The Cubs are going to play a Wild Card Series in a few weeks. If they hand the ninth inning to Webb the way they did Tuesday, they'd better hope the lead is bigger than two runs.
Seiya Suzuki getting thrown out as a courtesy runner tagging up on Alex Bregman's fly ball in the tenth was its own small piece of misery, the kind of thing that only stings once the ninth inning has already gone wrong. In Milwaukee, for the second night running, it did.
There's still time for Chicago to fix the ninth inning, or at least find someone else to pitch it. But right now they've got two straight nights of evidence, in identical losses, that they'd better start looking.
