Baseball has always owed part of its outcome to luck.

A grounder will take a gnarly hop. An umpire will miss a call. And when your team desperately needs a run, the wind at Wrigley Field will knock down a ball destined for the bleachers.

Ian Happ fell victim to that third option in the Cubs’ 4-3 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday.

With Carson Kelly on first base and the game tied at 3 in the bottom of the 8th inning, Happ — who entered the series finale with just one hit and one RBI in his last 18 at-bats (.055) — saw another golden opportunity come his way after his RBI single in the first.

It was a center-cut fastball he tattooed — 104.6 mph off the bat at a 25-degree launch angle. Pirates reliever Isaac Mattson dropped to a squat on the mound, his eyes following the ball with a grimace on his face as if he was anticipating the worst.

Had the wind not been blowing in from center field at 7 mph, it very well could have been home run No. 17 for Happ. Mattson looked like he knew it. Happ watched the ball fly like he knew it, too. Instead, it bounced at the edge of the warning track and over the basket, keeping Kelly at third base and leaving Happ with nothing but a ground-rule double to show for it.

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Happ shared his grievances with the unlucky bounce postgame.

“I wish it would’ve hit off the basket and stayed in play,” he told reporters with a chuckle. “But Dansby (Swanson) coming through there (in a) big spot was awesome.”

Swanson’s bases-loaded sacrifice fly two batters later was the difference in the game. But during a stretch in which big hits have been hard to come by for the Cubs, it was that sort of outcome for Happ that has seemed to dictate both the series and much of his season.

On Friday, during the fourth inning of the Cubs’ 3-2 loss in the opener, Happ ripped a line drive up the middle of the diamond with Seiya Suzuki on second. The batted ball itself had an xBA of .900, but instead, Pirates shortstop Jared Triolo was in the right place at the right time when he leapt in the air to rob Happ of a base hit and a potential game-tying RBI.

The results haven’t truly shown how Happ has improved this season. At the plate, he’s transformed himself: His strikeout rate is down to 22.2% from 25.6% last year, and he’s taking more walks. His chase rate is the lowest it’s been since 2018, while he’s making contact in the zone at the highest rate (82.5%) of his career.

Those are the types of things that don’t show up on the box score. Manager Craig Counsell made that clear when he praised his left fielder postgame, and it’s why he’s made Happ a mainstay despite the latter’s struggles.

“I think Ian’s run into a ton of bad luck this year,” Counsell told reporters. “But that was a big swing in the 8th to put us in a good spot, and we did enough today to create some opportunities. This is a better day offensively than the numbers will show. That’s Wrigley, and we’ve got to embrace that and understand that.”

The metrics concur with Counsell: Happ is one of baseball’s unluckiest hitters. Entering Sunday, his expected batting average (.261) was nearly 40 points higher than his actual clip (.225). That’s the second-largest negative difference in the league (minimum 500 plate appearances), behind only Juan Soto of the New York Mets (.298 xBA, .252 BA).

Kyle Tucker (.286 xBA, .265 BA) and Suzuki (.258 xBA, .251 BA) also occupy spots in the top 10 of that list of misfortune.

When Happ was asked whether he was aware of the extent of his bad luck this season, his response was instant.

“Oh yeah,” he told reporters. “It’s tough. The hard part about this game is that it’s supposed to even out, or they say, over a large sample, it will.

“It hasn’t this year, but there are a lot of things I’m proud of to this point, of what I’ve done.”

Happ logged his first multi-hit game since Aug. 8 and just his third since July 26, all while the team found a way to both win a game and take a series when they’ve needed it most. For Happ, it’s only a matter of time before the results start to show for how hard he’s worked.

“I’m at a point in my career where I’m going to be out there every day,” he said. “But I think understanding the process and having enough at-bats under my belt — you understand that if you’re doing things right, you’re going to be in a good spot.”