Cubs Beat Reds. Now Cheer For Cincinnati Over Swashbuckling Pirates. What?
In front of a sparse crowd, the Chicago Cubs continued their dream season by defeating the Cincinnati Reds 5-3 and inching closer to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who are two games ahead of the Cubs.
The biggest surprise of the game, well it’s not really a surprise but Austin Jackson hit a three run homer to help with the destruction of the Reds.
“When you’re in the role that I’m in, when you get in there, you just want to try to do whatever you can to contribute to a win,” Austin Jackson said. “I’ve been getting some good pitches to hit and doing my best not to miss them when I get them.”
Jason Hammel has struggled all season and lasted the routine five innings before stepping down. He got the win, but there will be some question marks going into next season.
“We’re good and we know it,” Hammel said. “It was nice to see it come together so quickly. It was something I saw the last couple weeks I was here last year before I got traded. Obviously, that’s one of the reasons I came back was because I thought we had a good chance to win.”
The Cubs are a deep team with guys that can change the course of the game no matter where they are in the lineup. The addition of Jackson could very well be the glue that fastens this team together throughout the playoffs. With less than a week to go until the game, the Cubs not only have to beat the Brewers but watch with bated breath as the Reds try to end a 12 game drought against the Swashbucklers of baseball.
“Our best attribute our last 45 games was depth,” Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer said. “We’re running out a really deep team, and Joe can mix and match the lineups well. To a man, the guys we’ve added have brought something to the clubhouse and brought something to the team.”
Some folks say that it’ll be tricky and downright next to impossible for the Reds to beat the Pirates, but as the late, great Catcher Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over”
Believe it