The Milwaukee Brewers played spoiler – for a couple hours anyway – and prevented the Cubs from wrapping up the title before a sellout crowd at Wrigley Field on Thursday night with a 5-4 victory.
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CHICAGO (AP) Wrigley Field was dark and empty when a loud cheer reverberated throughout the neighborhood surrounding the iconic ballpark.
Gennett nearly ruined the party again, giving the Brewers a 4-2 lead with a two-run drive in the seventh for his 13th homer. Justin Grimm (1-1) took the loss. Matz has been dealing with shoulder issues and hasn’t started since August 14. Closer Tyler Thornburg came on to get the final four outs to post his 10th save of the season.
PH Scooter Gennett was 1-for-1 with a double and two RBI. Denard Span added a two-run single.
The Dodgers took advantage of errors by second baseman Starlin Castro and Betances (3-5) to increase their NL West lead to five games over San Francisco.
The Cardinals remained a half-game behind the New York Mets and one game behind the Giants for the two NL wild cards.
Arrieta hasn’t had his best stuff in his last three outings, but he was able to grind out a win Sunday at Houston, giving up three runs and four hits over 5 1/3 innings. He snapped a tie with Yankees great Mickey Mantle for 17th place on the all-time homer list.
Luis Sardinas had an RBI single among his three hits for the Padres.
Single-ticket prices for the first Cubs home game in the NLDS were on offer for as low as $374 and as high as $1,128 on SeatGeek. Boston is two games ahead of Baltimore and Toronto going into Friday’s games.
“As an athlete, ” Maddon said, “you want to play in the championship game”. The Cubs last won the World Series in 1908.
Because of the loss, the Cubs needed some help to capture their first NL Central crown since the 2008 season.
Alex Colome worked the ninth for his 33rd save.
The Cubs are well positioned going into October for many reasons.
New York Yankees at Boston, 6:10 p.m.
Milwaukee outfielder Domingo Santana went 2 for 4 with two doubles and scored twice.
Donaldson, last year’s AL MVP, missed a three-game series against the Rays this week with a sore right hip. The action continues this afternoon, with oddsmakers at online sports book Bovada.lv installing Joe Maddon’s crew as a 1.5-run favorite.
The Cubs clinched the NL Central late Thursday when the St. Louis Cardinals lost in San Francisco. He drove a first-pitch fastball far out to left-center, a 437-foot drive that showed how far the lanky rookie can hit the ball. That ended Hill’s streak of 20 consecutive scoreless innings with Los Angeles.
While the Nationals haven’t clinched yet, the 10-game lead they now hold over the Mets with no head-to-head games remaining means the Mets are playing for the Wild Card.
“Any time I’ve ever done spring trainings, when I was the coordinator, you always work from the end to the beginning and that would be the other part of it, to try to manipulate the work in a manner that satisfies everybody, gets everybody rest, but you have to understand what you have to do on that first game of the playoffs, so it has to work backward”. On a franchise-history scale, it’s a rare but not unheard of event. Pittsburgh’s first seven runs all came from homers.
Rookie right-hander Daniel Mengden (2-7) held the Royals to three hits over seven scoreless innings. Then, a 2-out walk to Rizzo in the 9th brought 41,000+ fans on their feet and the potential winning run to the plate in the person of Ben Zobrist.
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The Royals have lost eight of their past nine home games.
