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AIPROPX ReportChicago Sun-Times · 1h ago
Cubs avoid sweep, but what’s concern level with NL Central gap widening, Shota Imanaga getting quick hook?
SEATTLE – The Cubs can be happy they didn’t get swept out of the Pacific Northwest by a sub-.500 Mariners team, winning a 19-2 rout Sunday.
But with the regular season’s final month approaching, the sport’s fifth best team is watching the division-leading – and best-in-baseball – Brewers get further away in the NL Central standings, all while one of the key pieces to its pitching puzzle is fresh off the shortest outing of his major league career.
After recently shrinking the Brewers’ lead in the NL Central to three games, the smallest it had been since May, the Cubs woke up Sunday behind by seven games, the largest deficit they’d faced in weeks.
All the while, the Phillies – with former Cubs slugger Kyle Schwarber hitting dramatic walk-off bombs – and Padres are hot on their heels in a tightening wild-card race.
WALK-OFF SCHWARBOMB OVER THE BATTER'S EYE!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/O9YgxPWSac
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) August 23, 2026
The sky might be falling for panicky standings-watchers across the North Side. But rest assured, that’s not what’s happening in the Cubs’ clubhouse.
“We have to win baseball games,” manager Craig Counsell said before Sunday’s game. “Do you know what the other teams around you are doing? Of course you do. But we have to win games. And when you don’t really control what the other teams do? It’s your team and you winning games, and that’s really all you do.
“I’m not sure what me looking and worrying about that stuff will do for the Cubs. You see the score, you say, ‘Oh, they won. OK, great.’”
The Cubs’ shot at the Brewers will come soon enough, with seven more games against their rivals left to play.
“Seasons always come down to the last week,” Counsell said. “The thing I always think about, the standings go up and down. And obviously, you’d love to make it as easy as you can on yourself, but then you’re always in the last 10 days of the season. That’s how it happens. That’s how it works.”
But other questions are popping up, like who the Cubs will be able to count on in those critical games against the Brewers.
They opted to keep lefty starter Shota Imanaga from starting against the Brewers in the last game they played in 2025, the decisive fifth game of the NLDS. He limped into the playoffs with a 6.51 ERA and 10 homers allowed in five September starts and gave up six runs and three homers in a pair of postseason outings.
Imanaga’s had a bit of a bumpy stretch lately, and few of Imanaga’s games as a big leaguer have been bumpier than Sunday’s, with the southpaw recording only six outs in the shortest outing of his career.
Imanaga allowed only a couple runs but put plenty on base, surrendering five hits and two walks, also hitting a batter as the pitches piled up in a hurry. One of the hits? A leadoff homer, the 30th long ball he’s given up this season, one shy of the major league lead.
“He was having a bad day,” Counsell said after the game. “Frankly, keeping it to two [runs] through two innings was pretty good. … He was struggling today, and you could tell. The misses were far bigger than normal. Velocity was down a little bit from the beginning.
“This was kind of isolated right now, and obviously, he gets to prove it the next time out.”
Though Counsell and the Cubs continue to rave about Imanaga’s work, in general, the lefty’s got a 6.39 ERA with five homers allowed in his last three starts.
Time to panic? Not yet, as there’s an awful lot of opportunity for Imanaga to straighten things out before the season’s most important games. But his recent struggles can’t help but bring to mind how things ended last season.
“As a starter, you want to keep the team in the game, and today, I couldn’t,” Imanaga said through an interpreter. “Next start, even if I don’t feel great, [I need to] keep us in the game, stay tenacious and help the team.”
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