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The Cubs stayed alive in the National League Division Series on Wednesday, narrowly beating the Brewers in a 4-3 Game 3 squeaker. Neither starting pitcher went long, with both teams needing to go relatively deep into their bullpens to finish out the contest; a combined 10 relievers were used.
Carlos Zambrano threw out the ceremonial first pitch, 13 years after his final game in the majors — Big Z’s former teammate, Rich Hill, appeared for the Royals in 2025 and is older than him — but things got off to an inauspicious start for the Cubs after that, as a lazy curve from starter Jameson Taillon was far less lazily lashed down the first base line into right field for a Christian Yelich double. After a Jackson Chourio groundout, Taillon lost the strike zone a bit, walking Brice Turang to put runners on first and second for William Contreras. Contreras hit an infield single to load the bases. Of course, that’s burying the lede a bit, but you couldn’t see that I was making the air quotes gesture with my fingers while I was writing that sentence. The “infield single” was anything but; it was a popup on the infield that Michael Busch lost in the sun while his sunglasses remained unused on his cap. Both Carson Kelly and Nico Hoerner ran over, but they weren’t in time to salvage the play. Dansby Swanson ran over as well, which became a problem when Kelly picked up the ball but had nobody to actually throw to for an attempted forceout of Turang.
Since the Cubs won the game anyway, this play needn’t elicit any high emotions, but it’s still worth addressing the infield fly issue. One of the keys to calling an infield fly is whether, based on the umpire’s judgment, a play can be made by an infielder with ordinary effort. Even if the popup was hit in a place that typically makes for an easy play, the sun was a factor, and from Busch’s arm shimmying at first, it was clear pretty quickly that it wasn’t as routine of a play as it typically might be. Without the umpire’s call, there was no infield fly.
Disaster didn’t ensure, however, and while Sal Frelick’s sac fly scored Yelich from third to put Milwaukee on the board, a Caleb Durbin flyout put an end to an inning the Cubs were no doubt happy to have escaped with just a 1-0 deficit.
For Quinn Priester and the Brewers, the bottom half of the frame was a nearly unmitigated disaster. For the Cubs, it was a textbook example of the power of plate discipline when used wisely. Priester wasn’t absurdly wild in his inning of work, but the Cubs worked the count against him like they were participants in a Kevin Youkilis-themed fantasy camp, taking Priester deep into every plate appearance and swinging at the meaty stuff. Chicago’s batters only whiffed on three of their 17 swings against Priester, and of the three balls that were put in play that inning, all three had an exit velocity over 100 mph. Busch’s leadoff home run tied the game at 1-1, and a pair of singles and walks scored two more.
With runners on first and third and two outs, Priester’s day was at an end. Nick Mears came in and allowed a fourth run with a fastball well down and away, scoring Ian Happ from third. After walking Swanson, Mears whiffed Matt Shaw with a bunch of fastballs.
That Happ run was the last one the Cubs scored in Game 3. Having to cover 8 1/3 innings, the Brewers’ bullpen mostly stayed out of trouble, with just two brief rallies that came to naught.
Jose Quintana’s most dangerous moment came in the fourth after a screaming double into the ivy for Seiya Suzuki and a walk to Happ after getting ahead 0-2. He cleaned up his own mess, however, setting Kelly, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Swanson down in order. Quintana’s outing wasn’t exactly a shining moment, but he kept Chicago from doing any further damage. He didn’t miss many bats, and while that isn’t unusual for him, he also didn’t induce much in the way of soft contact.
After Quintana’s three innings of work, Grant Anderson contributed two of his own, only allowing a two-out hit to Swanson in the sixth that came to nothing. He was on the mound, however, for one of the funnier plays of the game — well, maybe not if you’re a Cubs coach — after inheriting Kyle Tucker at first base from Quintana. Tucker appeared to decide on a weird compromise between leading off first and stealing second, resulting in him being caught awkwardly in no man’s land. He was nipped trying to get back to first far too late.
Chicago’s last fruitless attempt to add an insurance run came in the seventh after singles by Hoerner and Tucker knocked Jared Koenig out of the game. Chad Patrick came into the finish the Cubs for the inning and then again in the eighth.
For their part, the Brewers spent the game trying to chip away at that three-run deficit from the first inning. Taillon settled down after the game’s initial shenanigans, but one-out singles from Frelick and Durbin put the tying run at the plate in the fourth. A third single from Jake Bauers trimmed the deficit to two runs. A safety squeeze from Brandon Lockridge was hit too hard, leaving the Cubs with plenty of time to trap Durbin, the runner on third, in a rundown, though Bauers did advance to third, while Lockridge reached second. Drew Pomeranz had only just started warming up, and Taillon finished the innings with no further damage.
Pomeranz and Daniel Palencia mowed down the Brewers for two innings, but Andrew Kittredge didn’t fare nearly as well in the seventh. Bauers, who explored pitching this spring in order to have a better chance of continuing his big league career, had his second big hit, a round-tripper on Kittredge’s first offering. Kittredge recovered to close out the rest of the inning, but allowed a leadoff double to Chourio in the eighth before being yanked for Caleb Thielbar.
Thielbar managed to get strike four on Turang — strike three was pretty awfully de-framed by the catcher Kelly into a ball — but Contreras walked to continue the rally. Frelick just barely beat out a grounder to deny Thielbar a double play to end the inning. Manager Craig Counsell apparently was uninterested in seeing Thielbar take on Durbin to see which Caleb reigned supreme, and brought in Brad Keller. Keller immediately walked Durbin, and a pitch clock violation got Bauers a free ball to start his at-bat. But redemption was in the forecast rather than tragedy; Keller whiffed Bauers, then set the Brewers down in order in the ninth to finish things, making up for an ugly appearance last week that almost gave the Padres their comeback.
There it ended, 4-3 Cubs. The Cubs remain the underdogs, having to win two games in a row, but their 2025 season will continue at least one more day.
