Before first pitch, the Barstool Gambling crew had this one circled. Steven Cheah's daily same-game parlay for the Cubs-Cardinals tilt centered on two names: Colin Rea going 3-plus strikeouts and Nico Hoerner getting on base at least once. Simple, boring, exactly the kind of pick that wins you money on a Tuesday in July.
Cheah laid out the Cubs SGP hours before the first pitch: Rea to rack up strikeouts, Hoerner to get on base.
The pick barely got a chance to breathe before the Cubs offense made the whole thing feel like a formality. Ian Happ turned around a pitch from McGreevy for a two-run double in the first inning, and from there Chicago just kept adding on. By the top of the 2nd, the scoreboard read 7-0, and Rea hadn't even needed his strikeout stuff to bail him out yet.
Steven Cheah reacted live as Happ's early-inning damage set the tone for the blowout.
That's the kind of night this turned into for St. Louis. McGreevy came in with a respectable ERA and got run out of the building before he could settle in, and Cardinals fans who'd hoped for a competitive series game were instead watching Chicago tack on runs in bunches. The Cubs entered play well over.500 and treated this like a get-right game against a Cardinals club still hovering around break-even.
The broadcast showed the Cubs piling on runs, building that 7-0 cushion by the second inning.
Somewhere in the middle of all that scoring, a Cubs baserunner went in headfirst for a hustle slide into second, the kind of hard-nosed play that gets nicknamed on the internet before the game's even over. It's a small moment in a laugher, but it's the stuff that makes a blowout fun to watch instead of just a formality on the scoreboard.
A Cubs runner slid in headfirst to second base as Chicago kept the pressure on all night.
By the final out, the Cubs walked away 7-1 winners, a game where the only mystery was how many runs they'd tack on next. Rea didn't need a dominant strikeout night to get the win with that kind of cushion, but the parlay crowd betting Hoerner to reach base and Rea to rack up whiffs had a genuinely good time watching this one unfold on the road in St. Louis. For a Cubs team trying to hold its ground in a crowded NL race, a laugher like this is exactly the kind of low-stress win you bank and move on from.