Believe it or not, the Brewers finally lost.
Not that they didn’t try to stage another comeback Sunday, turning a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead with a clutch home run in the ninth inning. But the Reds got them in extra innings. The streak is dead.
Meanwhile, the Cubs took advantage of a rare opportunity to gain ground on their division rivals who, with two double-digit winning streaks since the start of July, have sprinted out to a big lead in the National League Central.
The Cubs’ 4-3 victory over the Pirates at Wrigley Field helped cut Milwaukee’s lead to eight games.
The Brewers come to the North Side for a pivotal five-game series, beginning with a doubleheader Monday.
“It’s tough [to ignore what the Brewers have done],’’ shortstop Dansby Swanson said.
‘‘It’s kind of in your face in a way. They’ve been doing some pretty incredible things, just the consistency and finding ways to win every day.
“We’ve got to show up and do what we do. In order for this team to get to where it wants to get to, we’ve got to consistently play better. We’ve got to consistently show up with a winning attitude and make things happen.”
The Cubs made things happen against Pittsburgh even if they didn’t solve the offensive woes that have plagued them throughout August. They got an unearned run after a fielding error, tied the game on a pop-up that dropped in front of a diving outfielder and scored the winning run on Swanson’s bases-loaded sacrifice fly. They played good defense and ran the bases well, seasonlong hallmarks.
They had only six hits, but it was enough to give them their first series win in four tries.
They won two of three against the last-place Pirates despite totaling only nine runs in a low-scoring weekend. The Cubs have played 15 games in August and scored more than four runs in only three of them.
Even though they managed to dent the Brewers’ division lead by a game, the Cubs head into five games in four days against their rivals in much the same place they’ve been: searching for an offensive breakout.
“It feels like, offensively, we’ve been doing a lot of really good things; it just hasn’t equated to runs being put on the board in the manner we obviously would like,” Swanson said. “But, nonetheless, impressive by the group to continue finding a way to get wins.
“There’s a lot of confidence that can be built from guys continuing to do what it takes in order to win the game.”
Finding different ways to win was a theme during the first half of the season, when the slow-to-arrive summer conditions and inward-blowing winds meant the Cubs couldn’t just mash their way to victory every day.
Two low-scoring victories in as many days showed the Cubs still have that in them, even if the bats aren’t hot like they were earlier in the season.
Still, it figures an offensive awakening will have to happen this week if they’re going to keep the division race interesting.
“A 1 [vs.] 2 series like this, something that has a lot of attention, it’s obviously going to be a great atmosphere,’’ left fielder Ian Happ said. ‘‘You have to do the little things right. They’re a good team, they play fundamental baseball, they run the bases well, they play defense well and they pitch it. For us, we have to play our game and be really sound fundamentally.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who are professionals and doing it at a high level, and it’s going to show up.”
Though the schedule says there’s a lot of baseball left, five head-to-head meetings this week make it feel like it might be now or never.
