Wrigley Field giveth, and Wrigley Field taketh away.
In the Cubs’ 4-3 loss to the Pirates on Sunday, it did more taking, much to Pete Crow-Armstrong’s chagrin.
In the third inning, Crow-Armstrong hit a ball to deep right field, but the northerly breeze pushed it back. Jake Mangum caught it on the warning track, 371 feet away, drawing a look of disbelief from Crow-Armstrong.
In the fifth, he hit a no-doubter, but he hit it to the wrong part of the park. The blast landed in center fielder Oneil Cruz’s glove 389 feet away. Crow-Armstrong threw his head back in frustration, mouth agape.
“You got to expect that playing here,” Crow-Armstrong told the Sun-Times. “It’s been a pretty friendly park all year, so I was probably due for a couple of those. Just unfortunate.”
What does it feel like to mash a ball and see it land in an outfielder’s glove?
“It just feels like you’re playing at Wrigley Field,” Crow-Armstrong said.
Crow-Armstrong hit his last home run Monday, No. 41 of the season. He has gone five consecutive games without a homer for the first time since going six games without one July 30 to Aug. 4. “Some days it plays for the hitter, some days it plays against,” manager Craig Counsell said. “It hurt us today. Some days it helps us. Pete took two very good swings. They’re home runs on neutral days. But when he hit them, the wind was blowing in hard.”
Miguel Amaya solved that, preceding Crow-Armstrong’s second misfortune with a two-run homer to left field at the same distance.
But the Cubs would score just once more, on Nico Hoerner’s groundout in the sixth. And in the final three innings, only one Cubs hitter reached, on a two-out walk in the seventh.
“Offensively, we weren’t able to create anything today,” Counsell said.
The Pirates did against lefty Matthew Boyd, putting their first three batters of the game on base and scoring once. Boyd, who went seven-plus innings in his last start Monday in Milwaukee, couldn’t get through the sixth. With a 2-1 lead, he walked Bryan Reynolds to start the inning, then allowed a single to Rafael Flores Jr. and a double to Nick Gonzales, tying the game.
“It’s just walking the leadoff guy, that just can’t happen,” Boyd said. “That sixth inning was the difference in the game. It started with that. I need to be better there. It’s completely on me.”
Reliever Aaron Civale entered and allowed one hit in two innings, but that hit, by pinch hitter Brandon Lowe, scored Flores and Gonzales.
In the bottom half, the Cubs loaded the bases with one out but scored just once.
The timing of the offense’s disappearance wasn’t great. The Phillies beat the Braves to tie the Cubs for the top National League wild-card spot, though the Cubs hold the tiebreaker by virtue of winning the season series. And the Padres entered their game Sunday night on a six-game winning streak and only two games back of both teams.
Only 12 games remain in the season, and the Cubs’ fate isn’t close to being determined.
“These are the fun games,” Counsell said. “You want good things to happen. Yesterday was a lot of fun; today we just couldn’t quite get that next good thing to happen. But we get to come back and do it tomorrow. This is the best part of the season, and you work really hard to get here. And we get to enjoy it.”
In those 12 games, the Cubs (83-67) will face the ninth-toughest schedule, based on opponents’ winning percentage, thanks to three-game series against the first-place Braves (88-62) this week and the American League wild-card-contending Red Sox (81-68) to finish the season.
We’ll see whether the Cubs have the wind at their backs.