MILWAUKEE — Michael Busch knocked a single back up the middle to begin the sixth inning for the Chicago Cubs, who trailed by one run.
And when Milwaukee Brewers reliever Aaron Ashby hit Nico Hoerner with a pitch, the Cubs had something brewing Saturday in Game 5 of the National League Division Series.
With two on and no outs, Kyle Tucker worked a 3-1 count. He swung and foul tipped a 98 mph fastball. Ashby then made a perfect pitch right on the corner of the plate low-and-away, and Tucker swung and missed to strike out. Following a pitching change, Seiya Suzuki lined out to left field and Ian Happ struck out looking as the Cubs came up empty.
“Situations like that you’ve got to try to take advantage of and capitalize on, but they have some really good pitchers and made some really good pitches when they needed to and got out of spots,” Tucker said.
That turned out to be the team’s best chance to string together a big inning in the season-ending 3-1 loss at American Family Field.
The Cubs collected just four hits in the game. Their only run came when Suzuki led off the second with a home run. Carson Kelly singled later in the inning.
The team’s two other hits were a single by Hoerner in the third and the single by Busch leading off the sixth.
“If you take Seiya’s homer and (Busch and Hoerner reaching in the sixth), that’s half of our base runners,” manager Craig Counsell said. “(The sixth) was the inning. That was the inning with the middle of the lineup up. Ashby made a pretty darned good pitch, 3-2 to Tucker. Looked like right down away on the corner. It was a nasty pitch.
“Seiya had a good at-bat against (Chad) Patrick for sure, had good at-bats all night, Seiya did. And then they got out of it essentially, they got a chance to get out of it. It’s really the only inning you could talk about. We just didn’t do much. We had six base runners. You’re going to have to hit homers to have any runs scoring in scenarios like that.”
The Cubs finished the series 4-for-27 with runners in scoring position, a .148 average. They left 34 runners on base.
Cubs hitters piled up the punchouts, striking out 46 times in the series — including eight on Saturday.
Through the first four games of the series, the Cubs had plenty of first-inning success, totaling 11 runs. They went down in order in the first inning of Game 5, and that would be the start of a night with tough results at the plate.
“We always feel like we have a chance to win a game, no matter what the score is,” Tucker said. “If we’re down by one or down by five, I feel like we’ve been in situations like that throughout the year. We’ve had really good innings, but we just weren’t able to kind of put the innings together.
“We had a few opportunities that they did a really good job pitching out of. They’ve got a really good pitching staff.”
Both teams went with bullpen games in Game 5, with the Brewers utilizing five pitchers on Saturday. Jacob Misiorowski made the longest appearance, surrendering one run on three hits with three strikeouts in four innings following Trevor Megill.
“They pitched very well,” Counsell said. “The only inning that we disrupted, maybe, (Milwaukee’s) plan was the sixth. But the rest of the game, they did a heck of a job.”
The six Cubs pitchers on Saturday combined to limit the Brewers to six hits. But three of the hits were home runs.
“Both sides, there wasn’t really anything on either side,” Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson said. “They essentially took three better swings than we did. And sometimes that’s how the playoffs can be. Obviously, give them a lot of credit just for their arms and the pitches they made. I felt like they threw the ball extremely well tonight and didn’t make too many mistakes, if any.
“When you have some of the stuff that some of those guys have, even when you do make a mistake you can kind of get away with it from time to time. That’s kind of the game in a nutshell, really.”
