Bregman, Happ Deliver Extra-Inning Punch as Cubs Escape St. Louis
The Cubs needed ten innings and a pair of clutch doubles to put St. Louis away, walking out of Busch City with a 4-2 win on July 30. JJ Wetherholt's 406-foot shot in the seventh nearly flipped the script entirely — but Chicago answered in the tenth with two runs that proved to be the difference.
St. Louis struck first. In the second, Bryan Torres singled to left to score Nootbaar and give the Cardinals a 1-0 lead — a clean, earned run that looked like it might hold for a while against Javier Assad. It didn't take long for Chicago to respond, though it came in the ugliest way possible: in the fourth, Ian Happ flied out to right, but a throwing error by Nootbaar allowed Alex Bregman to score and knot it at one. The Cardinals handed that run back themselves. The Cubs grabbed their first lead in the seventh when Michael Busch singled to left, scoring Swanson to make it 2-1. That's when Wetherholt stepped in and launched a 406-foot home run to right, swinging the Cardinals' win probability from 30% to 54% in a single swing. Just like that, St. Louis was back in control — or so it seemed.
The problem for the Cardinals is that the Cubs kept coming. Assad was pulled after 4.1 innings — 6 hits, 1 earned run, 6 strikeouts — and Ryan Rolison bridged the gap with 1.2 scoreless frames. Andre Pallante worked 6.1 innings for St. Louis, allowing 7 hits and 2 earned runs, but the game was still tied when the bullpen took over. Riley O'Brien tossed a clean inning for the Cardinals, but the damage came in the tenth. Bregman doubled to right to score Suzuki and put Chicago ahead 3-2, then Happ — who had been hitless in four at-bats — doubled to right himself to score Bregman and make it 4-2. Two doubles, two runs, game over.
The story of the night was Chicago's resilience and the Cardinals' inability to protect a lead they'd earned twice. Nico Hoerner went 3-for-5 and looks like he was a constant thorn in Pallante's side all evening, while Bregman's two-run, two-score night was the most impactful performance on the field. Wetherholt's homer was electric — 406 feet, a genuine momentum-shifter — but it appears the Cardinals simply didn't have enough in the tank to close it out when it mattered most. Chicago takes this one 4-2.