Forget Kade Anderson's debut. Forget the back-to-back homers. The story of the Cubs' night in Seattle on August 22 is Jacob Webb, and it's the kind of story that should keep Chicago fans up at night.
Webb walked into the ninth with a scoreless streak sitting at 24.2 innings, the kind of number that makes a manager stop worrying about the bullpen. Instead he watched Weston Wilson double, gave up a soft two-out RBI single to Leo Rivas that pulled Seattle within a run, then served up a two-run walk-off homer to Randy Arozarena, 404 feet to straightaway center. The streak snapped and the lead vanished, in the ugliest way possible on the road.
This is bigger than one swing. Bullpen randomness is what buries contenders in September and October. A team can build a lead over 130-some games and lose it in twenty minutes when a trusted reliever picks the wrong night to unravel. The Cubs led 4-2 heading into the ninth and had done everything right up to that point. Then it evaporated on one pitch.
They'd played well enough to that point to deserve better. David Peterson gave Chicago six gritty innings, allowing two earned runs while striking out eight, and wriggled out of a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the fifth with only one run scoring. He earned a win he never got to keep.
The offense did its part against the hyped rookie, too. In their third looks at Anderson, Pete Crow-Armstrong doubled off the wall, Alex Bregman went deep on a solo shot, and Michael Busch followed with a back-to-back solo homer to push Chicago ahead 3-2. Tyrone Taylor later doubled home a run off reliever Carlos Vargas to make it 4-2. Textbook road baseball.
Credit Seattle's side of it, too. Anderson, the 22-year-old third overall pick in the 2025 draft, made his big-league debut and became the first player from his class to reach the majors. He allowed three earned runs across 5⅔ innings and looked sharp until his manager sent him back out in the sixth to face Crow-Armstrong, Seiya Suzuki, Bregman, and Busch a third time. That decision nearly cost him his own story, until the bullpen and Arozarena bailed it out.
Michael Rucker got the win in relief; the loss went to Webb.
After the loss, the Cubs sat at 74-56, their NL wild-card lead trimmed to 4½ games. That's a comfortable cushion, though not a lock, and it reflects that night, not now. Seattle improved to 62-68, within three games of Houston in the AL West and two back of the final AL wild-card spot. Two teams pulled in opposite directions by the same swing.
The series finale set up Seattle's Bryce Miller against Chicago's Shota Imanaga. But the number that lingers from Saturday is 24.2, the streak Webb carried into the ninth. October gets decided by nights like this one.
