{"id":151143,"date":"2025-09-17T20:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T20:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/151143\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T20:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T20:24:09","slug":"cubs-clinch-post-season-spot-with-victory-over-pirates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/151143\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs clinch post-season spot with victory over Pirates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PITTSBURGH \u2014 Ian Happ homered and drove in three runs, and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/baseball\/mlb\/teams\/chicago-cubs\/\" class=\"sn-team-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-team=\"chicago-cubs\" data-league=\"mlb\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Chicago Cubs<\/a> clinched their first post-season berth since 2020 with an 8-4 win over the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/baseball\/mlb\/teams\/pittsburgh-pirates\/\" class=\"sn-team-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-team=\"pittsburgh-pirates\" data-league=\"mlb\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Pittsburgh Pirates<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Chicago has won four in a row and seven of eight overall. It leads the NL wild-card standings with an 88-64 record.<\/p>\n<p>Nico Hoerner had two hits and scored three times for the Cubs. Justin Turner hit a pair of RBI singles after entering in the sixth.<\/p>\n<p>The Cubs grabbed control with three runs in the sixth, helped by errors on Pirates reliever Yohan Ram\u00edrez (1-3) and catcher Joey Bart. Michael Busch drove in Dansby Swanson with a tiebreaking sacrifice fly, and Happ and Turner added run-scoring singles.<\/p>\n<p>Aaron Civale (4-9) pitched three scoreless innings for the win.<\/p>\n<p>Chicago scored four runs in the first before Pittsburgh recorded an out. Busch walked and scored on a balk before Happ hit his 23rd homer, a two-run drive on a curveball from Johan Oviedo that prompted an early mound visit. Mois\u00e9s Ballesteros drove the next pitch over the wall in right for his second career homer.<\/p>\n<p>Bart answered with a three-run shot off Matthew Boyd in the bottom half. Andrew McCutchen&#8217;s bases-loaded walk in the second tied it at 4.<\/p>\n<p>Boyd permitted seven hits and walked two in a season-low three innings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 Ian Happ homered and drove in three runs, and the Chicago Cubs clinched their first post-season&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-151143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}