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CHICAGO — It’d be natural for the Cubs to look ahead to Monday and overlook Sunday’s series finale against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

After all, the National League Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers, the hottest team in baseball with the longest winning streak in franchise history, are coming to town for a five-game, four-day series. And while the series doesn’t feel as big as it did before the Brewers’ 14-game winning streak (which was snapped on Sunday against the Cincinnati Reds), it’s the last time the two teams play and will largely impact the division race.

But the Cubs kept their thoughts on the Pirates and beat Pittsburgh 4-3 to take the three-game set after dropping the series opener. The win keeps the Cubs (70-53) in the top spot of the National League Wild Card and moves them to eight games behind the Brewers, the first time they have made up a game in the standings on Milwaukee since before the trade deadline.

Here are three takeaways from the win over the Pirates (52-73):

Striking first

The Cubs have been really good when they score first.

Let’s clarify that, they were 50-12 entering Sunday when they tallied the game’s first run – the best record in baseball.

So, when Ian Happ drove in Pete Crow-Armstrong with an RBI single in the second inning, the Cubs had to have felt a touch more comfortable. After all, before Saturday’s win, the Cubs hadn’t come from behind to win a game since July 2, the longest stretch in franchise history without a comeback win.

Of course, things got interesting after that. The Pirates tied the game, the Cubs took the lead back, Pittsburgh took the lead and the Cubs tied it before the Cubs took the lead in the eighth to win it.

Despite having gone so long without a comeback win, the Cubs clearly play better and are more comfortable when they’re in the driver’s seat – that’s an obvious – but it showed on Sunday.  

Happ, Swanson deliver

Happ finished the day 2-for-3 with a walk, a solid performance during a season in which he’s posted a .707 OPS entering Sunday, well below his career mark of .784.

That’s led to some discourse from fans who have wanted top prospect Owen Caissie, who was called up on Thursday, to play in place of the veteran. Caissie hadn’t played in a game since his major-league debut on Thursday, but entered as a pinch hitter for Matt Shaw to lead off the seventh.

“Ian’s a really good baseball player,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said before the game. “Ian’s had some bad luck this year. You can check that. He’s swung the bat really, pretty darn well.”

Indeed, Happ entered Sunday with a .261 expected batting average, per Baseball Savant, nearly a 40-point difference from his actual batting average of .225. His expected slugging percentage of .444 is in line with his career number (.443) and his mark from last season (.441). His strikeout rate is down from last year and his walk rate is up from 2024, too.

Counsell and the Cubs clearly believe the bad luck can turn for Happ and they’ll hope this was a starting point.

Swanson’s struggles with runners in scoring position have been well documented. He entered Sunday hitting .174 with a .480 OPS in those situations. Sunday, he stepped into the batter’s box in that situation in all four of his at-bats and twice delivered.

In the fifth inning, Swanson hit a double down the left field line that plated Happ to give the Cubs the lead. The biggest RBI, though, came in the eighth inning. With the bases loaded, Swanson hit a sacrifice fly to right field to plate the eventual game-winning run.

Having that duo deliver would be a boost to a lineup that is still trying to get consistent production from their big boppers, including Kyle Tucker and Seiya Suzuki.

Pitching decisions

Javier Assad looked OK in his second start of the season, allowing just one earned run on five hits in four innings of work. He worked around some traffic in his final two innings of work and Craig Counsell didn’t want the right-hander to face the Pirates lineup for a third time in a tie game the Cubs clearly wanted to win.

So, Counsell turned to left-hander Taylor Rogers, who hadn’t pitched since August 9 and made just his fifth appearance since joining the team at the trade deadline from the Pirates.  

Rogers worked around a two-out fielding error he made to post a zero in the fifth, and then Counsell turned to right-hander Ben Brown for the next 2.2 innings.

There was some discourse from fans on social media as to why Counsell turned to the 25-year-old with a 5.89 ERA this season – especially after he allowed a pair of runs in the sixth to give the Pirates the lead.

But Counsell and the Cubs needed length on Sunday after only getting 12 outs from Assad, especially with Monday’s doubleheader and no off day until next Monday. Using Brown in that situation allowed Counsell to save many of his bullpen arms for the first two games against Milwaukee, when he’ll need to cover 54 outs in a day.

Sunday was clearly a game the Cubs wanted to win, but they tried to thread the needle and do so while keeping an eye on the next few days.