Cubs: 10, Red Sox: 4: The Cubs Bite Back

While I was busy at the Taylor Swift concert last night, the Red Sox blew out the Cubs and hit six home runs. Today, when I was forced to watch their day game after getting home at 1 a.m. and was put in charge of the recap, they put on a miserably pathetic performance.

I guess our lesson for today is that I just need to be at a Taylor Swift concert every night and then they’ll win out!

But I think I gave all of you enough Swift content with my article from last week, so I’ll just get on with the recap now.

• The Cubs gave Boston a taste of their own medicine, scoring half of their runs via the home run just a night after the Sox scored six runs off the homer in their 8-2 victory.
• After being rather impressive during his time in Boston, James Paxton had a very tumultuous start, going only three innings and allowing six earned runs on three hits— one of which was a grand slam by Cody Bellinger.
• Justin Turner was the only Red Sox to record at least two hits, and Triston Casas led the way with two RBI as he hit his second home run in as many days.
• The WPA chart shows the completely abysmal nature of today’s game:

Here’s how WPA saw it:

Three “Studs”

I’m putting studs in quotation marks because I don’t know if any of these dudes should be considered “studs” for their performances.

1. Justin Turner (+.037 WPA), 2-4, R, RBI
2. Connor Wong (+.035 WPA), 1-3
3. Jarren Duran (+.021 WPA), 0-2, 2 BB

Three Duds

1. Masataka Yoshida (-.119 WPA), 0-4, K
2. Rafael Devers (-.038 WPA), 1-4, R, K
3. Enrique Hernandez (-.036 WPA), 0-2, BB, R

WPA Play of the Game

There is not a single Red Sox event labeled on today’s chart because they were absolutely never going to win. Cody Bellinger’s grand slam is the single game-changing event on there, but the Red Sox event with the most impact was Triston Casas’ home run, which chipped the Cubs’ win expectancy down from 99.1% to 97.9%!