Jesse Rogers, ESPN Staff Writer 8y

Cubs remind the baseball world how good they can be

ST. LOUIS – There was no large, collective exhale coming from the Chicago Cubs dugout Tuesday night. Sure, there were plenty of high-fives in the first inning of a 12-3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, but manager Joe Maddon described the six runs his team put up in the first as “business as usual.”

Starter Jason Hammel summed it up this way: “I took my first swings before I threw my first pitch.”

That’s a good thing when you’re on the road, where the Cubs have been scuffling on offense for a while. The Cubs had lost eight of their previous 12 games, and every run scored in that stretch seemed like a gift from the heavens. Otherwise, it felt like we were watching a root canal. The runs just didn’t come easily -- until Tuesday.

“With our talent level, it’s hard to keep us down for too long,” catcher David Ross said.

Ross earned his 500th career hit in the first inning, when he drove two runs in with a double before Hammel did the same in the next at-bat.

“Second three-game hit streak of the year, but who’s counting?” Hammel joked.

Yes, the Cubs are back to having fun, and at least for one night, they resurrected everyone’s favorite phrase of the spring: run differential. After slowly giving some back to the baseball gods, they exploded Tuesday and reminded everyone what this offense can do, especially when taking free passes. The Cubs walked six times, including four courtesy of Cardinals starter Michael Wacha.

“We don’t hit the panic button when we don’t score runs or we don’t pitch,” Hammel said. “We’re not robots. We can’t do it all the time.”

Maddon had been lecturing anyone who would listen that his team wasn’t playing that badly, despite losing two series in a row and being one loss from losing a third. In his estimation, the Cubs were constantly one hit from winning. He turned out to be right.

“Sometimes hitting is hard,” Ross said. “Simple as that.”

We sometimes don't like simple explanations; we assume there’s more under the surface. But Maddon knows his team better than anyone. He would let on if there were concern, but even after Monday’s game, in which the Cubs did everything better than St. Louis -- save two pitches -- but still lost the game, the manager never wavered.

“They’re all excited, but I didn’t see this [as an] exhale by any means,” Maddon said. “It was business as usual. I didn’t sense anything differently.”

Maybe we can call it the Jason Heyward effect or, as Maddon put it before the game, the "butterfly effect." The Cubs were 0-3 without Heyward in the lineup, then burst out as soon as he returned. In Maddon's mind, it isn't just the potential production they were missing; it was everything else Heyward brings to the table. He affects all parts of the Cubs' game, just as a butterfly flapping its wings can have an effect on its surroundings. After the game, Heyward said he was sore but would be fine.

“It’s good to be back with these guys,” Heyward said. “We’re grinding out a road trip, but great game all-around.”

Tuesday's game was the first non-grind of the trip. With six runs of cushion, Hammel sailed through the early innings with admittedly not his best stuff. It didn’t matter. For good measure, the Cubs added to their lead late, which Maddon raved about because that included an Addison Russell hustle play in the ninth inning, when he reached on an infield single. The manager thinks the example that sets for minor leaguers was worth any victory.

“My takeaway from the whole night is that,” he said emphatically.

Hopefully, he’ll excuse a starving fan base if its takeaway is the return of the Cubs' offense, combined with yet another great start by Hammel. This was Cubs baseball circa April 2016.

“It’s contagious sometimes,” Heyward said. “I’m just glad tonight it went our way.”

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