Ask any Cubs fan where they were when they learned that their team had signed Alex Bregman, and they can tell you. Recalling that moment might be a little easier because it happened in the middle of a Bears playoff game last winter, but the excitement for Bregman was because he is the kind of player who is expected to deliver in big moments, like playoff games.
Because of his resume, the repeated trips to the postseason and the timely hits coupled with a steady demeanor molded by so many innings and at-bats in the playoffs, Cubs fans were already dreaming in January about the following October.
After a slow first few months of the season, Bregman is delivering on that promise.
His seventh and ninth inning at-bats in Tuesday’s 4-3 win over the White Sox — the Cubs’ 13th walk-off win of the season thus far — are prime examples.
“You love it,” Bregman said of how he feels coming up in moments like this. “Sometimes you’re going to fail in them, but you want them every single time. Eventually, you keep putting yourself in those spots, and you keep getting those opportunities, you’re going to come through.”
Bregman was 0-for-3 on the night when he came up in the seventh inning against the Sox’ Grant Taylor, one of the toughest relief arms in baseball. With two runners on and the Cubs down by a run, Taylor had already struck out Pete Crow-Armstrong and Seiya Suzuki, and the potential rally looked all but dead.
Instead, Bregman drove Taylor’s 90 mile per hour slider into left field to drive in the game-tying run.
The Cubs may have gotten another gift via rain delay, because after the Sox’ top half of the eighth inning and Taylor set to pitch the bottom part of that frame, storms rolled in and both teams had to sit out a nearly 90-minute delay.
That took Taylor out of the game and helped create Bregman’s second opportunity to come through in a crucial spot. In the bottom of the ninth, Carson Kelly’s leadoff double put him in scoring position. Two batters later, Sox manager Will Venable opted to walk Crow-Armstrong — he chose to pitch to him in the bottom of the tenth Monday night and paid for it — and after Suzuki popped out to first, Bregman was once again headed to the plate with two outs and a teammate ready to score the game-ending run.
This time, it was a first pitch fastball that Bregman dumped into the outfield. Kelly scored from second, game over. Back-to-back walk-off wins against their crosstown rivals.
“Both innings, we had pretty good rallies started, and they seemed like they were going to stall, and then Alex comes through and gets us on the board in each of them,” manager Craig Counsell said.
Wins like Tuesday’s are crucial, not just because they give Cubs fans intracity bragging rights. For the first time in a very long time, the Cubs and White Sox are meeting late in the season when both teams are good. And not just good, but in the midst of respective playoff hunts.
Where the Cubs need to take advantage of any chance they can to gain ground on the Brewers with seven head-to-head matchups coming next month, the White Sox don’t yet have a truly comfortable lead in their division. And even in the event that they win the American League Central, there’s also an opportunity for them to get the number-two seed in the American League and bypass the wild card round.
All of that adds up to a mid-August series in which both teams have a lot more at stake than trying to give the local fans something to fight over with each other.
“What’s made this year better playing this team is they’re a good team,” Counsell said of his counterparts. “I mean, that’s what made last night fun is that they’re a good team, and it makes a difference. And I think you feel that difference kind of year over year. You very much feel that difference.”
After Wednesday’s series finale, the Cubs and White Sox won’t see each other again this year, unless it’s in the World Series. That’s a matchup that hasn’t happened since 1906, but for the first time since then, it seems realistically possible.
But between now and then, the Cubs have a lot of very important games to play, and Bregman is a vital part of them continuing to win those games. Kevin Gausman, who the Cubs acquired at the August 3 trade deadline, faced Bregman a lot during their shared time in the American League, and he knows what opposing pitchers are doing with right now when he’s in the batter’s box.
“He can cover so many different pitches. He’s a really smart hitter too,” Gausman said. “He knows how guys are going to pitch against him. He’s been around a long time, so he mixes that with the ability to change his swing to certain pitches.
“And just the mentality that he has in those big moments. He knows he’s done it before.”
With just a bit under 40 games left this season and a lot to try and accomplish in those games, the Cubs have already been through a lot as a team this year. Not just the deluge of injuries, but the turbulent ups and downs of the first couple of months of the season. Times when they were just as apt to win ten games in a row as lose that many in a stretch.
Having gone through that, the Cubs, like Bregman, are hitting their stride at a very good time.
“We’ve had stretches this year, early in the year, where we’ve been the hottest team in baseball, and then the coldest team in baseball, and then the hottest team in baseball again,” Bregman said. “But I feel like the main thing in the second half is just being consistent and playing consistent baseball, and I feel like we’ve done a good job of that in all three phases of the game.”