Sadly, you have heard this all before.
The Cubs had a bullpen meltdown in Monday’s game against the Padres at Petco Park, and so two bullpen moves were made before Tuesday’s game.
Unfortunately, it was those two relievers, Daniel Palencia and Luke Little, who had bad performances on Wednesday. The two runs (one each) that Palencia and Little allowed were the difference in a 4-2 loss to the Padres.
Sigh. Let’s look at how it all went down.
After Matthew Boyd and Nick Pivetta matched zeroes for the first two innings, the Cubs scored first, in the third. Carson Kelly singled, Jon Berti walked and Ian Happ singled to load the bases.
Kyle Tucker’s sacrifice fly scored Kelly [VIDEO].
The Cubs had a chance for more runs, but Seiya Suzuki hit into an inning-ending double play.
Then the Padres came back with a pair and took the lead in the bottom of the inning. Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado had RBI singles off Boyd.
The Padres loaded the bases with two out in the fifth, but Boyd got out of that jam by inducing a ground ball from Machado. And then San Diego loaded the bases again with one out in the sixth, and at that point Boyd was at 97 pitches and Craig Counsell felt that was enough for Boyd’s afternoon.
Counsell summoned Palencia to try to get out of the jam. Palencia got Gavin Sheets on strikes on a 100 mile per hour sinker, and then induced Elias Diaz to ground out to Nico Hoerner to end the inning [VIDEO].
Boyd threw well, his fourth very good start for the Cubs. He threw 66 strikes in those 97 pitches, allowed six hits and two walks and struck out three. So far, this has been an excellent signing by Jed Hoyer. Here’s more on Boyd’s outing [VIDEO].
And here are Boyd’s three strikeouts [VIDEO].
Palencia was left in the game to throw the seventh, and that’s where he fell apart. He allowed a leadoff single, then retired the next two hitters, but allowed an RBI double to Machado that made it a 3-1 game.
The Cubs got that run right back in the top of the eighth when Pete Crow-Armstrong led off the inning with his third homer of the road trip [VIDEO].
Two outs later, Ian Happ doubled, but Kyle Tucker struck out to end the inning [VIDEO].
In the bottom of the eighth, Little made his season debut for the Cubs, his first MLB game since July 12, 2024. He walked Jason Heyward, then a sac bunt moved Heyward to second, after which Little walked Gavin Sheets. After a second out on a popup, Little walked Tyler Wade to load the bases… and walked Tatis to force in a run. That was it for Little, who threw 34 pitches, but only 15 strikes — and a couple of those “strikes” to Tatis were foul balls on pitches out of the zone.
Little has talent, but yeesh, that was a bad inning. Ethan Roberts got the Cubs out of the inning on a fly to left, but Robert Suarez retired the Cubs 1-2-3 in the ninth and that was that.
Beyond the bullpen failure, the Cubs had only six hits and a walk in this game, and had just three at-bats with RISP. It was pointed out late in the Marquee broadcast that the Cubs had just seven walks in the series while the Padres had 18 (!). Can’t give up that many free baserunners and expect to win. And the Cubs might have to try some other relievers. Jack Neely, Tom Cosgrove, Gavin Hollowell and Jordan Wicks are pitchers on the 40-man roster who have options. As always, we await developments.
The Cubs wound up splitting their road trip 3-3, which is a decent result given the quality of the opposition they were facing.
A couple of final notes on this game from BCB’s JohnW53:
Since scoring three runs with one out in the fourth inning Monday, the Cubs scored a total of five runs in 24⅔ innings, with each of the runs coming in a different inning
The three leadoff walks by Cubs pitchers raised their season total of the kind to 21, of whom 14 have scored — 66.6 percent. The historic average is 40 percent. They also have walked nine batters with nobody out who did not lead off, and five of those have scored.
They’ll have Thursday off and then open a series at Wrigley Field Friday afternoon against the Arizona Diamondbacks. At this writing there’s no starter listed for the Cubs for Friday’s game, though if they stay on rotation, it should be Ben Brown’s turn. Corbin Burnes will go for Arizona. Game time Friday is 1:20 p.m. CT and TV coverage will be via Marquee Sports Network (and MLB Network outside the Cubs and D-backs market territories).