Reds 3, Cubs 0: Here’s to next year, beginning in Tokyo

The Cubs and Reds matched zeroes for nine innings, but the Cubs couldn’t hold the visitors down in extras.

The Cubs put a Spring Training split-squad lineup on the field Sunday at Wrigley against the Reds, and fought them to a 0-0 deadlock after nine innings.

Then in the 10th inning, after Ethan Roberts picked off the placed runner — something I don’t think I’ve seen in the few years we’ve had the Manfred Man — he couldn’t hold the Reds offense down and they dinked a few hits, combined with a walk, into a 3-0, 10-inning victory over the Cubs, the 16th time the Cubs had been shut out in 2024. With the loss, the Cubs finish with an identical record to last year, 83-79, and tie for second place in the NL Central with the Cardinals.

Sigh.

In any case, there were a few good things that happened in this game.

You did not have “Caleb Kilian will throw five shutout innings” on your bingo card for the final game (or any game!) of 2024, but that’s exactly what he did, and in fact, looked pretty good doing it. He allowed three singles and a couple of walks and struck out four.

Here are those four K’s [VIDEO].

Here’s a review of Kilian’s outing [VIDEO].

I will still say that I think Kilian should be worked into a leverage reliever, middle relief or setup. He can bring it at 98 miles per hour and I think had he not been injured in Spring Training this year, he’d have likely made the Opening Day roster in that role and the early season bullpen would have been better. Kilian finishes the year with a reasonable 4.22 ERA and today lowered his career ERA from 11.28 to 9.22. Baby steps. Perhaps next year, he’ll show us more of the good stuff he did in this game.

The Cubs couldn’t do anything with Hunter Greene, with just one hit in four innings, plus three walks. They managed to get a runner to third base twice over those first four innings, but could not score.

Hayden Wesneski threw two good relief innings, and Drew Smyly appeared for probably the last time as a Cub and allowed one single while recording two outs, departing for Keegan Thompson.

Thompson, unfortunately, was injured during his appearance [VIDEO].

Looks like he landed awkwardly and might have sprained his ankle; he had to be helped off the field. Hopefully, he’ll be back to 100 percent for Spring Training 2025.

Nate Pearson came in and finished off that inning with one pitch, a nasty slider, and also threw a scoreless ninth.

But the Cubs could not score in either inning. They got Nico Hoerner to scoring position on a single plus stolen base in the eighth, but nothing doing, and went down 1-2-3 in the ninth.

On to extras. Here’s the aforementioned pickoff of the Manfred Man by Roberts [VIDEO].

But Roberts could not hold the Reds from there, even with the bases empty and one out. He then allowed a single and walk, and Elly De La Cruz tripled in both runners, then scored on a single by Tyler Stephenson. At 3-0, even with multiple runs often scoring in Manfred Man extra innings, that was too much for the Cubs. First, Jonathan India made this nice play on an Ian Happ grounder [VIDEO].

They did get a two-out walk from Seiya Suzuki in the bottom of the 10th, bringing Michael Busch to the plate as the tying run. Busch had walked all four previous times to the plate in this game, but he hit a lazy fly to left and the 2024 Cubs season came to an end [VIDEO].

FWIW, before today the last Cub to walk four times in a game was Jason Heyward, on May 23, 2019.

A couple more things to wrap this day and year. After the game, Cubs players came out of the dugout and bullpen and applauded fans (shown above), a nice gesture. Sunday’s paid attendance was 33,792, making the season total 2,909,755, the first time the Cubs have reached the 2.9 million mark since 2019. The total ranked sixth in MLB this year and was up 134,606 from last year.

And some historic facts from this game from BCB’s JohnW53:

With the Reds scoring in the 10th inning, the Cubs were denied a team-record fourth straight shutout at home.

Before the runs scored, Cubs pitchers had recorded 39⅔ consecutive scoreless innings at home, smashing their previous best of 35⅓, set in 1909.

This is just the second time the Cubs have shut out the same opponent for nine or more innings in three straight games at home. They beat the Padres, 1-0, 4-0 and 10-0, July 5-7, 1976.

The Cubs were shut out for the 16th time this season, tying them with the Reds for third most. The Nationals had 18; the White Sox, 19.

A big thank you to John for all the research and facts he’s given me and posted here at BCB all year long.

ICYMI, here’s what many bleacher season ticket holders and regulars do on the last day of the home season:

As much food as you think is there, there’s probably more. It’s an amazing array of food brought by people who genuinely care about each other. I’m glad to be a part of this.

Now begins the work to improve the Cubs for 2025. Of course we’ll cover that as the offseason progresses, and there will be plenty more offseason content here, including game threads for every postseason game and, of course, more sleuthing photos — and if you have any you’d like sleuthed, send them along!

The Cubs will open the 2025 season at Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, March 18 against the Dodgers. It’s widely assumed that Shohei Ohtani will return to pitching next year and that will be his first start — most likely against Shōta Imanaga, and that’ll be a fantastic matchup. I am planning on travel to Tokyo to see the two Cubs/Dodgers games there, and so will report to you from Japan.

In the meantime, here’s to a great offseason for the Cubs and for every BCB reader, thank you for being here all year and you too have a great winter. As is my custom here, I wrap this final recap of 2024 with the words of the late baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, from his writing “The Green Fields of the Mind”:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.