CHICAGO — The moment Jameson Taillon reached back for his fourth pitch of the second inning and pulled up, the Cubs’ night was already compromised. He walked off the Wrigley Field mound gripping his left hamstring, having recorded zero outs, and the rest of Sunday night became an elaborate act of damage limitation that fell one run short. Taillon said afterward he believes he is headed to the injured list.
Matt Chapman lined a walk-off single to center field off Trent Thornton in the 10th inning, scoring pinch runner Jonah Cox from second base to give the San Francisco Giants a 2-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs before 36,317 fans on Sunday Night Baseball. The win gave San Francisco the series two games to one and extended a stretch in which the Giants have gone 4-1 over their last five games.
Chapman, who had driven in eight runs in Friday’s 18-3 rout at the same ballpark, collected just one hit all night — but it was the only one that mattered. Thornton threw a sinker on the second pitch of the at-bat that Chapman drove cleanly through the middle, and Cox never broke stride rounding third. The Giants had manufactured their run without requiring anything spectacular from their offense, because their pitching staff had held Chicago to a single manufactured tally of its own.
What the Cubs will examine most closely on Monday morning is what they didn’t lose — which is to say, very little on the defensive side — and what they couldn’t overcome. Taillon was replaced by Javier Assad just three batters into the second inning, after the Giants had already scored in the first on Jung Hoo Lee’s two-out RBI single that plated Rafael Devers. That single stretched Lee’s hitting streak to 15 games. Assad was exceptional in relief, throwing 6 1/3 shutout innings and allowing only Chapman’s infield single along with a walk and a hit batter. The game was, effectively, a bullpen game the Cubs hadn’t planned on.
The Cubs’ offense tied it in the third when Moises Ballesteros singled to score Carson Kelly, who had reached on a single of his own. But Chicago left 10 runners on base over the course of the evening, including Pete Crow-Armstrong stranded at third in the 10th after Keaton Winn navigated the ninth and Dylan Smith worked a perfect 10th to secure his first major league save. Winn walked away with the win, improving to 2-1 after a scoreless ninth.
What the Cubs never fully recovered from wasn’t the bullpen usage — Assad looked sharp enough that the workload was manageable — but rather the momentum vacuum created in the very first inning of a nationally televised game. Taillon had been asked to stop a skid and deliver a rubber-match performance on national television. He faced seven batters, recorded a strikeout, walked two, and left the field in evident pain. The Cubs entered Sunday night in need of something stabilizing after absorbing an 18-3 loss on Friday at Wrigley; they got the opposite.
For the Giants, the series was defined by an improbable three-game arc. They opened Friday with a historic offensive outburst — seven home runs, 19 hits, the most lopsided Cubs home loss in recent memory — and then lost a tight extra-innings game Saturday when a Victor Bericoto error proved costly. On Sunday they produced just four hits and still walked away with the series, a testament to their pitching depth. Trevor McDonald kept Chicago off the board through five innings before the late relievers closed it, as the Associated Press reported.
The Cubs have now dropped 20 of their last 27 games, a stretch that has peeled away nearly everything accumulated in a strong first six weeks of the season. They entered Sunday at 34-31 and left it at 34-32. Two-time Gold Glove shortstop Dansby Swanson, who was held out of the starting lineup for a second straight game while batting .180, was not available to provide the offensive spark Chicago needed in extra innings.
Chapman finished with one hit and a walk in four plate appearances. He has now driven in the decisive run across two of this series’ three games, contributing 12 RBIs over two games at Wrigley Field this week. The Giants head home to San Francisco at 27-39, a record that does not yet reflect what they’ve shown over the past week: a team capable of beating a contender in its own building, twice in three nights, the second time without needing their offense to do very much at all.
What this series leaves unresolved is the Cubs’ rotation going forward. Assad’s recall from Triple-A came only the day before as a depth move; his performance Sunday demonstrated he can eat innings at the major league level. Whether he stays in the rotation, or whether the front office pursues external reinforcement before the trade deadline, is a question the Cubs will have to answer in the coming days — beginning with whatever confirmation emerges about Taillon’s status on Monday morning.
