Rivas Walks It Off as Seattle Survives Bregman's Two-Homer Night
Alex Bregman hit two home runs and drove in three, and Chicago still lost. A walk-off single in the tenth inning gave Seattle a 6-5 win over the Cubs on August 22.
Chicago came out swinging. Pete Crow-Armstrong homered to right center (367 feet) in the first inning to put the Cubs on top, and Bregman followed with a two-run shot to left (373 feet) that made it 3-0 before Seattle had even settled in. It looked like a statement inning — the kind that buries a home team early. It wasn't.
Seattle answered immediately and decisively. In the second, Cal Raleigh launched a three-run homer to left center (410 feet) to tie the game at 3, and Brendan Donovan's single to right scored another run to flip the lead to 4-3. By the fifth, Randy Arozarena singled to center to score Rodden and push it to 5-3. The Cubs had handed Seattle a three-run gift, and Seattle cashed every dollar of it. Matthew Boyd gave up 4 earned runs across 6 innings, walking two and striking out three — workmanlike, but not good enough when the offense went quiet for six straight innings after that first-inning burst.
What followed was the kind of late-game theater that makes baseball genuinely uncomfortable to watch. Ian Happ crushed a solo shot to right center (432 feet) in the eighth to cut it to 5-4. Then Bregman — already with one homer on the night — hit another to left center (405 feet) in the ninth to tie it at 5-5 and force extras. It appeared, for a moment, that Bregman's sheer force of will was going to drag Chicago to a win. Daniel Palencia had thrown a clean inning of relief, and the Cubs' bullpen looked to be holding. But in the tenth, with Arozarena on base, Rivas singled to center to score him — and that was the ballgame. The win probability swung from 61% to 100% on that single swing, and Seattle walked off with a 6-5 win. Bregman went 3-for-5 with 2 HR and 3 RBI and still ended up on the losing side, which looks like the cruelest kind of individual performance in baseball. Raleigh's 410-foot three-run bomb in the second was the real pivot point of this game — the moment Seattle stopped absorbing punishment and started throwing it back.