Pete Crow-Armstrong recorded the first walk-off hit of his career Thursday night, doing so only hours after another difficult defensive mistake in the outfield.
Rather than suffering a ninth consecutive loss at Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cubs stormed back with four runs in the ninth inning to escape a sweep against the Athletics.
“Hopefully,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said, “we tell that story in October.”
As the crosstown White Sox continue to regain momentum, the Cubs have once again found themselves carrying the label of Chicago’s underachieving baseball team. Still, with 99 games remaining entering Friday, there remains plenty of time for a turnaround.
That possibility feels far better than where the club has spent most of the last month — struggling to stay afloat.
Fans at Wrigley witnessed more troubling signs during Thursday’s finale against the Athletics, though it also felt like the same issues continuing to repeat themselves.
In the sixth inning, Crow-Armstrong lost track of a fly ball in center field, allowing Shea Langeliers to circle the bases for a two-run inside-the-park home run that pushed the Athletics ahead 4-0.
“I was kind of just trotting down the line. I thought PCA was messing with me, like, ‘Oh, I don’t see it,’” Langeliers said. “Then I saw the ball coming down behind him and I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta go!’”
To Crow-Armstrong’s credit, the mistake did not derail the rest of his night. Leading off the bottom of the sixth, he answered immediately by launching a home run over the right-field wall — his ninth homer of the season and third in the last five games.
By the time he stepped in against Luis Medina in the ninth inning with two runners on, two outs, and the game tied at six, the earlier miscue seemed far behind him.
“In the past I might have dwelt on that, and that always ends up affecting how you go about the rest of your day,” Crow-Armstrong said. “People having my back, me not hiding from the next at-bat, yeah, I’m growing up a little bit and I’m proud of that, but I’ve got to keep it going for the rest of the year.”
His teammates understand the situation well. While Crow-Armstrong has drawn extra attention because of his major offseason contract extension and viral moments — including his heated May 17 exchange with a White Sox fan — plenty of others inside the Cubs clubhouse have contributed to the recent slump.
Shortstop Dansby Swanson entered Thursday hitting just .162 over his previous 33 games. The victory improved Chicago to only 6-18 since May 8, when the Cubs completed a stretch that saw them win 20 of 23 games after routing Texas.
“The conviction from the group that ninth inning, that’s who we are,” Swanson said. “Just seeing guys come out and put together the at-bats … to be able to get that off our back a little bit was really important.”
Now Chicago hopes to regain momentum during a favorable stretch of the schedule. The Cubs are set for 12 straight games against the San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies, the two teams that entered Friday with the worst winning percentages in the National League.
Despite the recent struggles, Chicago still sits only 5½ games behind the NL Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers heading into a weekend series against the Giants at Wrigley Field.
At the same time, the Cubs remain stuck as the fourth-best team in the only division in baseball where every club currently owns a winning record.
Whether Thursday’s dramatic win over the Athletics becomes the spark for another postseason push remains uncertain.
At the very least, though, it reminded Cubs fans that there is still time to believe this season can be salvaged.