Chicago Cubs: Offense ‘Fried’ as team falls to 1-5 on the year

Chicago Cubs: Another awful night for the bullpen

Following a leadoff double from Ender Inciarte in the fifth and a walk to Josh Donaldson, pitching coach Tommy Hottovy turned things over to Carl Edwards Jr. The lanky hurler promptly walked Freddie Freeman, loading the bases with nobody out before uncorking a wild pitch, allowing a run to score.

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Edwards followed it up with a walk to Ronald Acuna Jr. before the Cubs made another move by bringing in Tyler Chatwood. Nick Markakis immediately gifted Chatwood with a bases-clearing double putting the Braves up 5-0. The Braves were not done, however, as Ozzie Albies singled and came around to score another run on Swanson’s RBI single.

The ‘glass half-full’ with Chatwood on Thursday night has to be the zero walks he allowed. As someone who has struggled with command since arriving on the North Side, it is a positive thing to see and something he can hopefully build on moving forward.

Mike Montgomery came in following Chatwood, allowing three earned runs in two innings worth of work. As it was all night, the Cubs got tagged with some bad luck in the eighth inning, following Contreras’ catcher interference with two outs. It allowed the inning to continue and Markakis made Montgomery pay with a two-run double.

Darvish was not great; I’ll give you that, however, the bullpen continues to underwhelm and frankly, implode at almost every opportunity they receive. Something needs to change moving forward because if not it will be a very long season.