{"id":746110,"date":"2026-07-06T08:24:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/746110\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T08:24:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T08:24:33","slug":"2026-cubs-heroes-and-goats-pete-crow-armstrong-is-the-superhero-vs-the-cardinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/746110\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 Cubs Heroes and Goats: Pete Crow-Armstrong is the Superhero vs. the Cardinals"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m going to start here again, there are still only five teams with more wins than the Cubs through July 4. On a pace to win 89 games. Go math. The Cubs played a game and lost. That lowered their overall win pace by an equivalent number. We\u2019re getting to the point in the season where that pace doesn\u2019t move a lot day to day and it takes streaks to move the number one way or the other.<\/p>\n

Pete Crow-Armstrong was named an All-Star Saturday night. The Cubs are the fifth best team to date in the NL and they got a single player. Not that slots are apportioned relative to team strength, you could be a very bad team and have two superstars who make the team. Or a very good team that doesn\u2019t get multiple players.<\/p>\n

Ben Brown was the only other Cub who I felt flashed star level performance for any significant length of time. I didn\u2019t think he\u2019d done enough and then he got hurt. So this felt correct. I didn\u2019t look over the rest of the roster or any of the usual noise out there that so and so didn\u2019t belong there and so and so got snubbed. There are more good players than All-Star spots and typically the every team should be represented ruled leads to one or two guys who maybe otherwise wouldn\u2019t be there. The most I\u2019ve ever done is feel a guy was good enough to deserve consideration. I\u2019d always rather they just got the days off. But I recognize it\u2019s cool for the players to get to go at least once or twice in a career.<\/p>\n

On the field in Chicago Saturday night, there wasn\u2019t a lot of positive going on. Hat tip to Cubs pitchers, three runs over nine is a fine performance. They ended up using five pitchers to do it. But they didn\u2019t really use many pitchers Friday in the lopsided loss, so not a huge deal. They were able to keep it close in case the offense ever came to life. This is exactly how you want to use your pen to try to steal a game. It just wasn\u2019t to be on this day.<\/p>\n

The Cub offense was limited to five singles, four walks and a hit batter. 10 baserunners, no slug. That\u2019s a tough way to mount any offense. To make matters worse, Pete Crow-Armstrong was on four times with a single, two walks and a hit by pitch. That means the whole rest of the team reached base six times over nine innings. This is the same old story, the Cubs are one superstar player and a bunch of average to good players.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t follow other teams with any high level awareness. So I don\u2019t know how this compares to anyone else. The Cubs don\u2019t have much chance against a team that is executing on either or both sides of the plate. On Friday, the Cardinals offense was locked in and on Saturday their pitchers shut the Cub offense down. The Cubs didn\u2019t mount any real resistance either day. Not great. Not a lot of fun. Breathing some life into a Cardinals team that has been reeling a bit over the last few weeks. They certainly needed these games more and they\u2019ve gotten them.<\/p>\n

Pete Crow-Armstrong. Single, two walks, hit by pitch. He did get caught stealing once.Michael Conforto had a pair of singles and a walk. Two players were seven of the 10 runners.Caleb Thielbar retired all four batters he faced, striking out one.<\/p>\n

Game 89, July 4: Cardinals 3, Cubs 0 (49-40)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Baseball Savant<\/p>\n

Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.<\/p>\n

Superhero: Pete Crow-Armstrong (.097). 1-1, 2 BB, HBP, CSHero: Michael Conforto (.063). 2-3, BBSidekick: Tyler Ferguson (.038). IP, 5 BF, H, 2 K, HBPBilly Goat: Seiya Suzuki (-.158). 0-4Goat: Miguel Amaya (-.138). 0-3Kid: Dansby Swanson (-.111). 0-3<\/p>\n

WPA Notes: Michael Busch (-.108) was just behind Dansby Swanson for the last spot here.<\/p>\n

WPA Play of the Game: This whole exercise never feels quite as useless as when the play of the game is the very first play of the game. JJ Wetherholt started the game with a homer and that held up as the top play. (.100)<\/p>\n

Cubs Play of the Game: Sh\u014dta Imanaga faced Jordan Walker with runners on first and second with no outs in the third, the Cubs down two. He got a double play ball for the first two outs. (.076)<\/p>\n

\"ThomasSmith\"<\/a>\"Bleed<\/p>\n

Game 88 Winner: Other was the winner with 46 percent of the vote and the suggestions were Alex Bregman or none of the above. It was definitely that kind of game.<\/p>\n

Rizzo Award Standings: (Top 5\/Bottom 5)<\/p>\n

The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.<\/p>\n

Pete Crow-Armstrong +21Carson Kelly +14.5Ben Brown +13.5Trent Thornton +12.5Michael Busch\/Michael Conforto +12Edward Cabrera -9.5Phil Maton\/Dansby Swanson -10Seiya Suzuki -12.5Caleb Thielbar -13<\/p>\n

Up Next: Game three of the weekend series Sunday afternoon. Javier Assad (6-1, 4.53) gets another start. Last time out he was used as a reliever after he\u2019d had three straight starts. The Padres scored four runs against him in 2.2 innings of work, but the Cubs had a good sized lead when he came in. I\u2019m not sure Assad has a ton of experience working in that situation where you have a big lead and you are just trying to finish the string. We all know the old don\u2019t walk anyone and go after hitters, but that\u2019s not really the Javy style.<\/p>\n

Lefty Matthew Liberatore (4-5, 5.33) starts for the Cardinals. He\u2019s coming off of a good start, against the Braves of all teams. He allowed just one run in five innings of work. Back on May 31, the Cubs were maybe his best start of the year. He held them scoreless over 5.1 innings, allowing three hits and one walk.<\/p>\n

Javy\u2019s whole style reads as \u201cfind a way.\u201d He seems to always work into and out of trouble. This whole weekend series with the Cardinals feels like that for the team as a whole. Try to get out of the trouble, limit damage. That hasn\u2019t worked for two days. Maybe, hopefully, the third time will be the charm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m going to start here again, there are still only five teams with more wins than the Cubs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[298679,363,99],"class_list":["post-746110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-chicago-cubs-scores","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}