“The home run is important, man.”
Craig Counsell didn’t know what was going to happen Friday when he said that before his Cubs started a weekend series with the Nationals. The skipper was speaking generally.
But it proved a relevant point ahead of what followed, the Cubs blasting four home runs in an 11-5 win at Wrigley Field, where the winds were blowing in a hitter-friendly direction, a seeming rarity this season.
“It’s nice to take advantage of days when they’re like this,” shortstop Dansby Swanson said.
The Nationals are one of baseball’s worst teams, and the pitcher they sent to the mound in the series opener, righty Jake Irvin, came in with more homers allowed (31) than any other pitcher in the National League.
But Swanson made Irvin’s plunking of outfielder Willi Castro with two outs in the first inning hurt badly, crushing a three-run shot that served as an early game-breaker.
“The first one was a huge one,” Counsell said of Swanson’s swat. “Three-run homers, those are huge hits in games, game-changing hits. Absolutely a huge one from Dansby to get us going.”
It was a noisy start to an afternoon that resembled the first half of the season, when the Cubs were swinging red-hot bats and sending balls flying into the bleachers more than almost every other team in the majors.
They were a first-place club in those days, and while winning the NL Central is now rather difficult after the Brewers’ second-half surge, there’s a whole postseason awaiting the Cubs.
If the Cubs are going to celebrate at the end of October, they’ll need to look more like they did during the campaign’s opening months. Like they did Friday.
“The home run is an important part of the baseball offense,” Counsell said before the game. “We were pretty successful [in the first half] because we were hitting a bunch of home runs. We’ve hit less home runs [in the second half].
“It’s the best way to score in baseball. It’s going to be important that, if we want to be a better offense, yeah, we’re going to have to hit some more home runs. That’s how it’s going to have to work.”
After ranking third behind only the Yankees and Dodgers with 142 home runs in the first half, the Cubs entered Friday just 23rd since the All-Star break with 47 long balls.
First-half power hitters such as center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong and designated hitter Seiya Suzuki have cooled dramatically. That duo combined for 50 homers in the first half and has managed a combined five since the break.
The Cubs have flexed their power more of late, their bats coming to life on a recent road trip out West. But even a weekend stay in the homer heaven that is Coors Field couldn’t vault them out of the league’s statistical lower third.
But it was more than just Friday’s quartet of long balls — Swanson was joined by Reese McGuire, Nico Hoerner and Ian Happ in the dinger department — that had the Cubs looking like they did early in the year. They ran the bases well, played defense well, capitalized on mistakes and made the opposing pitchers work. It was a well-rounded effort and a reminder of what this team is capable of, now and in the playoffs.
“We’ve started to see the guys popping off the last couple weeks here,” Crow-Armstrong said. “One of the days in Denver, today, just good examples of what we can look like when everybody’s rocking. How we approach the game and how we want to attack defenses, it’s [going] first to third, having guys on third base with less than two outs, being able to run the bases, steal some bags and put the pressure on there.
“The nerd in me loves days like today, not so much for the hitting as for what the hitting allows you to do on the bases and vice versa.”