Cubs takeaways: What we learned as bats go silent in loss to Diamondbacks
The Chicago Cubs’ bats exploded in their first game back stateside.
They were relatively quiet Friday night in Game 2, though, as they mustered just three hits in an 8-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The loss drops the Cubs to 1-3, with two more contests at Chase Field in the four-game set.
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Here are three takeaways from the game:
Taillon’s struggles
Cubs right-hander Jameson Taillon sought more mphs on his pitches this offseason and spring to continue to improve. There was more velocity against the D-backs – it just happened to be for the hitters.
Arizona’s lineup — particularly their No. 5 through 7 hitters — feasted on the veteran. Pavin Smith, Eugenio Suárez and Alek Thomas were 6-for-6 with two home runs (both by Suárez), three doubles and four RBI off Taillon. But the caliber of contact was most worrisome for Taillon and the Cubs.
The 33-year-old no longer is the young righty who sat in the mid-to-upper 90s with his fastball. But as a contact-first pitcher, Taillon’s chase for velocity was a way to keep hitters off balance and reduce hard contact. That wasn’t the case Friday night.
The Diamondbacks had 10 hard-hit balls – an exit velocity of 95 mph or more – against Taillon and were 6-for-10 in those 10 at-bats.
It’s one game, and Taillon, like the rest of the Cubs’ pitching staff, had a weird ramp-up, ramp-down and then back up because of the MLB Tokyo Series. But tracking his velocity, along with the results that come from it, will be worth it, especially after a season in which he had a 3.27 ERA in 165.1 innings.
Missed opportunity
Let’s set the record straight – three hits against an offense as explosive as Arizona’s usually isn’t going to be enough. But the Cubs did have a chance early in the game to break things open.
The first three hitters of the second inning – Dansby Swanson (walk), Nico Hoerner (error) and Pete Crow-Armstrong (double) – all reached base. Crow-Armstrong’s extra-base hit drove in Swanson and put the Cubs in a position to strike first against D-backs starter Merrill Kelly with two runners in scoring position.
Rookie Matt Shaw hit a comebacker to Kelly for the first out. Then, Carson Kelly hit a groundball to shortstop Geraldo Perdomo, who rifled a strike to José Herrera at home to nab Hoerner at the plate. It was a bang-bang play, one the Cubs chose not to review. Ian Happ popped out to shortstop to nix the threat.
Would the Cubs like to go back in time and challenge Hoerner’s slide at the plate? Potentially, but in the moment, manager Craig Counsell and his staff made the right call – there’s still no guarantee that the play would have been overturned, and you don’t want to lose that challenge so early in a game.
But the Cubs would like a do-over on those two at-bats after Crow-Armstrong’s double. Outs in those situations aren’t the end of the world — they’re going to happen — but you’d prefer them to be productive outs that can score a run or advance a runner.
Instead of forcing Kelly into throwing more stressful pitches, they let him off the hook, and the D-backs answered with a two-run bottom of the frame. And Keller went on to pitch 5.1 innings of one-run ball.
Cub Killer
It’s been two games in Arizona, but the Cubs and their fans have seen enough of Suárez.
The veteran third baseman had a two-homer day, just 24 hours after he went deep for the first time in 2025. Suárez hit a two-run homer in the second inning to stake Arizona to a 2-1 lead. It was déjà vu two innings later when he hit another two-run homer off Taillon to double the lead. In the fifth inning, Suárez just missed his third homer of the game, flying out to Happ on the left-field warning track with a runner on second.
Suárez hadn’t just hurt the Cubs in these last two games. He spent the first seven years of his career with the NL Central rival Cincinnati Reds, and in 126 career games, he’s slashing .269/.352/540 (.892 OPS) with 34 home runs and 88 RBI against the Cubs.