ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Alex Bregman went 4 for 4 with two home runs and four RBIs in his second game back from a frightening injury, and the Chicago Cubs beat the Boston Red Sox 6-2 on Sunday in a regular-season finale that was relocated to Tropicana Field.<\/p>\n
Chicago is the No. 5 seed in the National League playoffs and will play a best-of-three Wild Card Series at fourth-seeded San Diego beginning Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Boston is the No. 5 seed in the American League playoffs and will travel to New York to open its Wild Card Series the same night against the rival Yankees.<\/p>\n
Major League Baseball moved the Cubs-Red Sox season finale to Florida because of a weekend nor’easter that was expected to batter the Boston area into Monday. Ahead of the storm, the Red Sox swept a doubleheader from the Cubs on Friday at Fenway Park.<\/p>\n
Bregman went 0 for 4 with a strikeout at designated hitter in the opener \u2014 five days after sustaining facial fractures when he was struck in the face by a foul ball while standing in the on-deck circle.<\/p>\n
The three-time All-Star third baseman, who played for Boston last year, was the DH again Sunday and fared much better at the plate in his final postseason tuneup. In addition to finishing a triple shy of the cycle, he drew a walk and scored three times.<\/p>\n
With the NL MVP award virtually locked up, Pete Crow-Armstrong singled to open the game before Cubs manager Craig Counsell immediately removed him for pinch-runner Tyrone Taylor. Bregman launched the next pitch from Tanner Houck (0-1) into the left-field seats.<\/p>\n
Adley Rutschman hit a solo homer off Chicago starter Shota Imanaga, who was lifted after one inning with postseason seeding already decided.<\/p>\n
Braxton Garrett (1-1) pitched five strong innings in relief for his first win since May 29, 2024. Colin Rea earned his second save.<\/p>\n
Played at the home of the Tampa Bay Rays, the game drew 20,411 fans who had less than 48 hours’ notice to purchase tickets.<\/p>\n
Chicago finished 89-73, three games shy of its 92-70 mark in 2025.<\/p>\n
Boston, which was 89-73 in 2025, ended the season 87-75. The Red Sox fired manager Alex Cora following a 10-17 start and replaced him with Chad Tracy.<\/p>\n
Under Tracy, Boston became the first team to qualify for the postseason after dropping as many as 44 of its initial 75 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Alex Bregman went 4 for 4 with two home runs and four RBIs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":908634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[352432,352433,352431,64,63,12284,591,85,476738],"class_list":["post-908633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-app-around-maine","tag-app-in-the-community","tag-around-maine-more-maine-news","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-maine","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-zak-gilbert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/908634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}