The Cubs were able to cool off baseball’s hottest team Friday.
Will they be able to stand the heat lurking behind them in their own division?
The second half started with a win for the North Siders, who halted the visiting Red Sox’ 10-game winning streak. After the first two Cubs hitters of the game walked, designated hitter Seiya Suzuki smacked his team-leading 26th homer of the season, plenty to power a 4-1 victory.
But the streakers of greatest concern figure to be the division-rival Brewers, who sat just a game back of the Cubs in the NL Central standings entering play Friday.
“The Brewers are a good baseball team,” manager Craig Counsell, who used to skipper those Brewers, said before Friday’s game. “I’m not sure there’s anything we can do, other than when we play them, to prevent them from winning.”
If the Cubs had been trying from afar to wish away Brewers wins, it didn’t work. Milwaukee finished the first half with 31 wins in 43 games, closing a one-time 6 1/2-game deficit to just one game.
“They’re a really good team. I don’t think they’re going to go away,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said Friday. “They’ve played really well. Especially over the last 30 games or so, they’ve played excellent baseball.
“I don’t expect that race to change. I expect us to play well, I expect them to play well. That’s why the goal, to me, is focusing on [what we can control]. We’ve got eight more games against them, that’s the part we can control.”
The Brewers are breathing down the Cubs’ necks, threatening to unseat the North Siders from the first-place spot they’ve held since April 4. But could it be considered a good thing that the Cubs – with their eyes on baseball’s biggest prize, the World Series trophy – are facing some stiff competition in the middle of July?
“I think there’s something to that, a sense of urgency,” Hoyer said. “I don’t think this group lacks for urgency ever. But I do think there is something potentially good about that, you have someone at your heels.”
RBI guy
Suzuki’s three-run homer brought him to 80 RBIs, putting him on pace for 136 by season’s end, which would put him near the top 10 single-season marks in franchise history.
“Seiya, he’s having a tremendous offensive season,” Counsell said after the game. “Put men on base in front of him, and good things have seemed to happen this year. We’ll keep trying to do that.”
Suzuki, who plenty of Cubs fans – as well as his Cubs teammates – considered an All-Star snub, revealed that he was invited to participate in the Home Run Derby ahead of the All-Star Game.
Obviously, he chose not to participate, instead unleashing his home-run swing Friday.
“I hope he approaches the second half for himself as an opportunity to show everybody what could have happened to him [during] the All-Star break,” center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said.
Injury updates
Righty pitcher Javier Assad will make his first minor league rehab start next Thursday as he works back from a strained oblique.
Catcher Miguel Amaya will get into game action at a similar time to Assad, perhaps a couple days later, as he works back from his own oblique strain.
Righty pitcher Jameson Taillon, who is out with a strained calf, will begin throwing bullpen sessions shortly, and the team hopes to have him throw off a mound at the end of their next road trip.
Righty reliever Porter Hodge is set to throw a bullpen session Saturday, and if all goes well, the Cubs hope to send him to Triple-A Iowa for a rehab assignment when they begin their next road trip.
