Chicago Cubs catcher Yan Gomes noticed the cowboy hat within the Wrigley Field clubhouse and felt impressed.
He didn’t know whom the hat belonged to, however Gomes grabbed it and delivered it to his supposed recipient, second baseman Nico Hoerner. Gomes instructed Hoerner to put on it throughout his postgame interview, and the budding Cubs star obliged.
A beaming Hoerner, whose game-winning single accomplished a three-hit evening, sported the hat fittingly emblazoned with a silver star.
“He’s the new sheriff in town,” Gomes declared after Hoerner’s first profession walk-off hit gave the Cubs a 3-2 win in 10 innings Monday in opposition to the Seattle Mariners.
“Just trying to have fun in here, man. I feel like this is a good place and we’ve got a good thing going on, especially a guy like Nico. Man, this guy works his tail off. He’s one of the faces of our team, and what a better way to start that.”
A win on April 10 won’t imply something come September if the Cubs don’t play nicely and produce 5 months of profitable baseball. But Monday’s extra-inning victory in opposition to a 2022 playoff workforce and its ace pitcher felt prefer it may very well be the beginning of one thing particular.
“Getting off to a good start is for sure important for anybody, but at the same time I feel like it’s important to understand what we’re building here,” Gomes mentioned. “I really feel just like the second half went rather well final yr, however we simply can’t — we lose a sequence, we lose a pair video games — we are able to’t hold our heads on it. We’ve acquired approach too good of a workforce, approach too good of a tradition, approach too good of a fan base that’s behind us each single recreation to hold our heads.
“I feel like we’ve built a team that top to bottom can really do this. We’ve got a lot of experience here. When something happens, we have 10 to 15 guys that have done it already.”
For a company that hasn’t skilled the hope of chance and a constructive outlook since, at greatest, stretches of the primary half of 2021, the win — which moved the Cubs again over .500 at 5-4 — may very well be a harbinger of what’s to return. It’s only one recreation of 162, and now the Cubs should show this generally is a springboard amid a tough schedule to begin the yr.
“Just to know you can beat good teams in close games, do the extra-inning thing,” Hoerner mentioned. “All that stuff matters. A nice win to have early in the season.”
After Seattle’s Jarred Kelenic took reliever Michael Fulmer deep to proper discipline to tie the sport with a one-out solo dwelling run within the ninth, the Cubs relied on three key moments to tug out the win.
1. Keegan Thompson escapes bases-loaded jam.
Thompson didn’t seem fazed by the state of affairs.
The Mariners rapidly loaded the bases within the tenth with a pair of full-count walks by Cooper Hummel and Julio Rodríguez sandwiched round J.P. Crawford’s popout bunt try. A mound go to from Gomes after the second stroll gave Thompson a short breather and an opportunity to lock again in.
“You have to take your chances,” Thompson informed the Tribune afterward. “Early in the count you’ve got to be aggressive in the zone. To get to those two-strike points where you can go breaking stuff out of the zone and get the chase pitches … I’m trying to be aggressive.”
Thompson attacked Ty France with a cutter and four-seam fastball that have been referred to as for strikes and finally put him away on a whiff at a 1-2 slider down and away. He once more acquired forward 0-2, this time with four-seamers, to Eugenio Suarez and completed him off with one other fastball because the Mariners third baseman pulled the ball to Patrick Wisdom at third for an inning-ending forceout.
Thompson shifted the momentum again to the Cubs.
“We have a lot of confidence in him,” Ross mentioned. “So it’s a nice recovery there as he settled in.”
2. An ‘invisible’ Nick Madrigal steals third.
The Cubs needed to make one thing occur when Nick Madrigal entered as a pinch runner at second to begin the underside of the tenth.
They had some intel on Mariners reliever Matt Brash’s strikes and needed to place stress on the protection. Madrigal was knowledgeable throughout the ninth he would both pinch run as the automated runner or pinch hit for Gomes to steer off the tenth.
Madrigal broke on Brash’s first motion, which he instantly realized was an inside pickoff transfer. Instead of stopping to retreat or power a rundown, Madrigal dedicated to his steal try. Brash’s off-balance throw to a shifted Suarez, who was shifting to 3rd base, wasn’t shut.
“His leg lift was pretty slow, so I was already maybe halfway down the line already. So in my head I was going to go through the fielder to the bag as hard as I can and try to knock the ball out if it beats me,” Madrigal mentioned. “I was just being aggressive. I had a feeling and just went for it.”
It received’t go down as Madrigal’s smoothest steal, however model factors don’t matter when representing the profitable run.
“He thought he was invisible there,” Gomes mentioned grinning. “I’m not sure we draw up that play like that, but it worked out in our way and sometimes that’s what happens playing here in Wrigley. Fans start screaming, guys turn around, like, what’s happening and the next thing you know he’s sliding into third.”
3. Nico Hoerner’s strategy units up walk-off hit.
Brash’s fastball-slider mixture assessments hitters by altering their eye ranges.
Once Hoerner fouled off the first-pitch slider that caught an excessive amount of of the center of the plate, he was prepared when the righty went again to it on the 1-2 depend. That time, Hoerner sliced the slider away to proper discipline for the game-winning hit. First base coach Mike Napoli enveloped Hoerner in a hug after he made his approach by way of the bag as teammates rushed the sector to hitch the celebration.
The RBI marked Hoerner’s first of the season. Cody Bellinger and Eric Hosmer, who additionally drove in a run within the win, are tied for the workforce lead with seven RBIs.
“I really appreciate how widespread the contribution has been,” Hoerner mentioned. “We clearly want guys, myself included, to take a step and actually proceed to enhance and be high-impact gamers. But the depth of our group is actually sturdy and that speaks to the personalities we’ve right here too and from the workers by way of the locker room, I actually belief the individuals we’ve.
“It’s hard to predict those things, but you can make the most of each day and today’s a good example of that.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com