If you're trying to figure out who the Chicago Cubs are in 2026, Friday at Wrigley gave you the full pitch deck in 3 hours. Ben Brown was carving the Giants up. Craig Counsell yanked him. Rafael Devers immediately made him pay. The Cubs spent most of the afternoon staring down a loss they probably deserved. Then Pete Crow-Armstrong decided that wasn't going to happen.
Brown was the story for the first 5 innings — efficient, missing bats, looking like the rotation's most reliable arm on a team that desperately needs one. Even Big Cat, who has been pretty open about how grim the vibes around this team have been lately, was forced to type the words out loud.
Big Cat with the highest praise a frustrated Cubs fan can muster mid-game.
Thank you Ben Brown. The lone current bright spot
Then Counsell came out and got Brown after 87 pitches and 16 outs with the Cubs clinging to a 0-0 shutout. The very next batter, Devers, took the new arm deep for his 8th of the year. You can decide for yourself whether that's bad process or bad luck, but on a team with no margin for error, it played like both.
Raffy Devers ambushes the bullpen seconds after Brown hit the showers.
Enter PCA. Crow-Armstrong has been catching strays all spring for some weird defensive plays, but his bat has been carrying him — and Friday it carried the whole roster. He extended his hitting streak to 11 games with an infield single, then made it a real game with a homer off Roupp to flip the energy at Wrigley.
Steven Cheah pushing back on the PCA critics with receipts.
But the Giants kept punching back. Daniel Palencia coughed up the go-ahead run. The bullpen looked cooked. The Cubs were down to their last out in the 9th, the kind of spot where this team has been folding for weeks. So PCA did it again — a 104.2 MPH laser off Camilo Doval to knot it at 2 and send the place into orbit.
PCA's 9th-inning game-tying shot, exit-velo numbers and all.
From there it was Cardiac Cubs baseball in its purest form: a 10th-inning walk-off, a 3-2 final, and Clark waving the W flag like it was October. Crow-Armstrong finished with 4 hits, 10 total bases, and scored 2 of the team's 3 runs by himself. As Big Cat put it, this Cubs squad either walks it off or gets dog walked — no in between. Friday, mercifully, was the former.
The walk-off itself — 3-2 in the 10th, full mob scene on the infield.