Chicago Cubs catcher Yan Gomes spotted the cowboy hat in the Wrigley Field clubhouse and felt inspired.
He didn’t know whom the hat belonged to, but Gomes grabbed it and delivered it to his intended recipient, second baseman Nico Hoerner. Gomes instructed Hoerner to wear it during his postgame interview, and the budding Cubs star obliged.
A beaming Hoerner, whose game-winning single completed a three-hit night, sported the hat fittingly emblazoned with a silver star.
“He’s the new sheriff in town,” Gomes declared after Hoerner’s first career walk-off hit gave the Cubs a 3-2 win in 10 innings Monday against the Seattle Mariners.
“Just trying to have fun in here, man. I feel like this is a good place and we’ve got a good thing going on, especially a guy like Nico. Man, this guy works his tail off. He’s one of the faces of our team, and what a better way to start that.”
A win on April 10 might not mean anything come September if the Cubs don’t play well and produce five months of winning baseball. But Monday’s extra-inning victory against a 2022 playoff team and its ace pitcher felt like it could be the start of something special.
“Getting off to a good start is for sure important for anybody, but at the same time I feel like it’s important to understand what we’re building here,” Gomes said. “I feel like the second half went really well last year, but we just can’t — we lose a series, we lose a couple games — we can’t hang our heads on it. We’ve got way too good of a team, way too good of a culture, way too good of a fan base that’s behind us every single game to hang our heads.
“I feel like we’ve built a team that top to bottom can really do this. We’ve got a lot of experience here. When something happens, we have 10 to 15 guys that have done it already.”
For an organization that hasn’t experienced the hope of possibility and a positive outlook since, at best, stretches of the first half of 2021, the win — which moved the Cubs back over .500 at 5-4 — could be a harbinger of what’s to come. It’s just one game of 162, and now the Cubs must prove this can be a springboard amid a difficult schedule to start the year.
“Just to know you can beat good teams in close games, do the extra-inning thing,” Hoerner said. “All that stuff matters. A nice win to have early in the season.”
After Seattle’s Jarred Kelenic took reliever Michael Fulmer deep to right field to tie the game with a one-out solo home run in the ninth, the Cubs relied on three key moments to pull out the win.
1. Keegan Thompson escapes bases-loaded jam.
Thompson did not appear fazed by the situation.
The Mariners quickly loaded the bases in the 10th with a pair of full-count walks by Cooper Hummel and Julio Rodríguez sandwiched around J.P. Crawford’s popout bunt attempt. A mound visit from Gomes after the second walk gave Thompson a brief breather and a chance to lock back in.
“You have to take your chances,” Thompson told the Tribune afterward. “Early in the count you’ve got to be aggressive in the zone. To get to those two-strike points where you can go breaking stuff out of the zone and get the chase pitches … I’m trying to be aggressive.”
Thompson attacked Ty France with a cutter and four-seam fastball that were called for strikes and eventually put him away on a whiff at a 1-2 slider down and away. He again got ahead 0-2, this time with four-seamers, to Eugenio Suarez and finished him off with another fastball as the Mariners third baseman pulled the ball to Patrick Wisdom at third for an inning-ending forceout.
Thompson shifted the momentum back to the Cubs.
“We have a lot of confidence in him,” Ross said. “So it’s a nice recovery there as he settled in.”
2. An ‘invisible’ Nick Madrigal steals third.
The Cubs wanted to make something happen when Madrigal entered as a pinch runner at second to start the bottom of the 10th.
They had some intel on Mariners reliever Matt Brash’s moves and wanted to put pressure on the defense. Madrigal was informed during the ninth he would either pinch run as the automatic runner or pinch hit for Gomes to lead off the 10th.
Madrigal broke on Brash’s first movement, which he immediately realized was an inside pickoff move. Instead of stopping to retreat or force a rundown, Madrigal committed to his steal attempt. Brash’s off-balance throw to a shifted Suarez, who was moving to third base, wasn’t close.
“His leg lift was pretty slow, so I was already maybe halfway down the line already,” Madrigal said. ”So in my head I was going to go through the fielder to the bag as hard as I can and try to knock the ball out if it beats me. I was just being aggressive. I had a feeling and just went for it.”
It won’t go down as Madrigal’s smoothest steal, but style points don’t matter when representing the winning run.
“He thought he was invisible there,” Gomes said, grinning. “I’m not sure we draw up that play like that, but it worked out in our way and sometimes that’s what happens playing here in Wrigley. Fans start screaming, guys turn around, like, ‘What’s happening?’ and the next thing you know he’s sliding into third.”
3. Nico Hoerner’s approach sets up walk-off hit.
Brash’s fastball-slider combination tests hitters by changing their eye levels.
Once Hoerner fouled off the first-pitch slider that caught too much of the middle of the plate, he was ready when the righty went back to it on a 1-2 count. That time, Hoerner sliced the slider away to right field for the game-winning hit.
First base coach Mike Napoli enveloped Hoerner in a hug after he made his way through the bag as teammates rushed the field to join the celebration.
The RBI was Hoerner’s first of the season. Cody Bellinger and Eric Hosmer, who also drove in a run in the win, are tied for the team lead with seven RBIs.
“I really appreciate how widespread the contribution has been,” Hoerner said. "We obviously need guys, myself included, to take a step and really continue to improve and be high-impact players. But the depth of our group is really strong and that speaks to the personalities we have here, too, and from the staff through the locker room, I really trust the people we have.
“It’s hard to predict those things, but you can make the most of each day and today’s a good example of that.”
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