There are bad losses and then there are the kind that linger into the next morning. The Cubs hit the second bucket on Sunday night, dropping a primetime extra-inning game where every break that could go wrong, did. Jameson Taillon left the game hurt, which is the kind of headline no contender wants to wake up to in June, and the offense couldn't cash in when it mattered.
Steven Cheah summed up the night in one brutal sentence.
Terrible Cubs loss. Jamo gets hurt. You get a gem from the Ass man and you lose with runners on 3rd in the 8th and 10th innings.
The cruel part is that Javier Assad picked up his rotation-mate and absolutely dealt. The Ass man stepping in and grinding through innings is exactly the kind of bullpen-saving outing you bank for October. But a gem only counts if the lineup remembers it's allowed to score, and on Sunday night the Cubs left runners stranded on third base in both the 8th and the 10th. That's not a slump. That's a personal insult to the pitcher.
Eddie was begging for a run while Assad was still cooking.
Assad steps up and pitches his ass off. Can we please get some damn runs and not let it go to waste?
Carson Kelly did his part on the other side, ending innings on replay challenges like he'd been studying the rulebook between pitches. Kelly's reputation for winning those reviews is real, and on a night where every out felt expensive, the veteran catcher kept stacking little wins behind the plate. Unfortunately, little wins don't show up on the scoreboard.
Cheah giving Kelly his flowers for the challenge-game.
Carson Kelly ending innings with challenges. He is so good at those.
So now the Cubs are staring down a Monday morning with a starter possibly headed for the IL, a bullpen that just absorbed extra frames, and an offense that has to live with the fact it stranded a winning run 90 feet from home twice in one night. Brutal in primetime is exactly the right phrase. Onto the next one, but this one's going to leave a mark.