Chicago Cubs beat St. Louis Cardinals to advance to NLCS
It used to be that the club with the best record from each league just played each other in the World Series. The Cubs had the best record in the National League in 1945, and subsequently went on to play in (and lose) the World Series.
But since the current playoff format was put into place (even prior to the Wild Card addition), Chicago had won just one playoff series. They beat the Atlanta Braves in the 2003 NLDS. But that was at Turner Field. They’ve never clinched a series at Wrigley Field, which hadn’t even been constructed when the team won the World Series in 1908.
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That changed on Tuesday, as the Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardinals 6-4 to win their NLDS matchup 3 games to 1. Stephen Piscotty struck out on a slider in the dirt, Miguel Montero put the tag on him, and pumped his fist in celebration.
John Lackey started the game for the Cardinals, and took the mound in the bottom of the first with a 2-0 lead. After he retired the side in short order, it appeared St. Louis might be on its way to forcing a Game 5 at Busch Stadium on Tuesday. Lackey even picked up a single in the top of the second inning, and it looked like it was going to be that kind of game for Chicago.
But momentum shifted in the Cubs’ favor quickly, as Hammel roped a two-out RBI single up the middle with runners on first and second. Starlin Castro came in to score on the hit, with Kyle Schwarber going to second.
But the true hero of the inning was Javier Baez, who, starting in place of the injured Addison Russell, followed up Hammel’s single with a three-run homer to right field to give Chicago a 4-2 lead.
RBI knocks from Tony Cruz and Brandon Moss would tie the game up at 4 in the top of the sixth, though a bigger Cardinals rally was killed off as Cruz was thrown out at home trying to score on Moss’s single to end the inning.
The Cubs responded, as Anthony Rizzo took an 0-2 fastball down the heart of the plate into the right-field seats to give Chicago a 5-4 lead. An absolute moonshot from Schwarber in the seventh doubled the Cubs’ lead, and they wouldn’t look back.
Scoreless appearances from Fernando Rodney, Clayton Richard and Pedro Strop kept the Cardinals off the board in the seventh and eighth innings, and Hector Rondon worked around a two-out single to put the game in the books. Despite picking up a blown save in the sixth, Trevor Cahill walked away with the win, and the Cubs will now await the winner of the Mets/Dodgers series to play a best-of-seven set for a trip to the World Series.