PITTSBURGH — Four and a half years after the Cubs dismantled their last championship core, they finally made it to the playoffs.
The Cubs clinched a postseason berth with a 8-4 win against the Pirates on Wednesday, sweeping the three-game set to officially end a four-year playoff drought.
The road to get there had its false hope and dashed expectations, close calls and shocking twists.
Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer promised at the 2021 trade deadline that the staggering overhaul that sent out nine major-league players for a band of mostly prospects, and dismantled the championship core, would accelerate the Cubs’ path back into contention.
It still took two seasons of below-.500 baseball, a near-miss in 2023, and a seven-week slump in 2024 that the team never quite erased.
This year, the Cubs boasted one of the best run-scoring offenses in the majors in the first half of the season. And though that group cooled off after the All-Star break, the Cubs still entered Wednesday with the fourth-best record in MLB.
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The Brewers still had a comfortable lead in the division race, but the Cubs occupied the top NL wild card spot.
The Cubs got off to a hot start Wednesday, with Ian Happ and Moises Ballesteros hitting back-to-back home runs in the first inning to jump out to a 4-0 lead.
A shaky start from Cubs left-hander Matthew Boyd, however, quickly erased the team’s advantage. Boyd surrendered a three-run homer to Joey Bart in the first inning and then issued a game-tying walk to Andrew McCutchen with the bases loaded in the second.
After an action-packed start, the game turned into a slog for the next few innings, until the Cubs retook the lead in the sixth against the Pirates bullpen.
Leading off the inning for the Cubs, Dansby Swanson took advantage of a series of Pirates mistakes to score the go-ahead run.
He hit a comebacker to reliever Yohan Ramírez, who went to a knee to field the ball and threw in the dirt to first. Swanson reached on the error. Then he took off for second base in a three-ball count to Matt Shaw, drawing an errant throw on ball four, which got Swanson to third. He scored on Michael Busch’s sacrifice fly.
Three straight singles from Nico Hoerner, Happ and Justin Turner expanded the Cubs’ lead to 7-4.
In the eighth inning Turner hit another RBI single for a little extra insurance.
