Both the host Chicago Cubs and Oakland Athletics have at least one eye on 2025 as they prepare to meet on Monday night for the opener of a three-game interleague series.
A potential playoff berth is slowly drifting away from Chicago (76-73), which sits five games behind the Mets and the Braves in the National League wild-card race. New York and Atlanta are currently tied for the third and final wild card.
The Cubs dropped three in a row before picking up a 6-2 win over the Colorado Rockies on Sunday. Michael Busch paced Chicago with a pair of homers, and Pete Crow-Armstrong also went deep in the victory.
Busch and Crow-Armstrong provided all the offense the Cubs needed to overcome 16 men left on base.
“We left a small farming village in central Illinois of runners on base, but we played good offense,” Chicago manager Craig Counsell said. “We were missing the next hit, but in the ninth, to get those extra (three) runs, certainly was a big deal.”
Sunday’s win marked the end of a six-game road trip in which the Cubs went 3-3. Chicago scored 40 times during that stretch and will now be trying to bring that type of run support into a seven-game homestand that begins with Monday’s contest.
Left-hander Shota Imanaga (13-3, 3.03 ERA) hopes the Cubs keep it up, as he is scheduled to make his 28th start of the season on Monday.
Imanaga has been on a roll, going 4-0 with a 2.67 ERA over his past four starts. He got the best of the Los Angeles Dodgers last Tuesday, giving up three runs on seven hits in seven innings to earn the win.
Monday will be Imanaga’s first career appearance against Oakland (65-85).
Imanaga is set to go up against a fellow rookie in Athletics right-hander Joey Estes (7-7, 4.36).
Last time out, Estes came away with a win against the Houston Astros, yielding three runs (two earned) and seven hits across 6 2/3 innings last Wednesday.
Estes has never faced Chicago.
Unlike the Cubs, Oakland has completely lost hope of playing well into the fall and is already eliminated from postseason contention. Things took a turn for the worse this weekend, though, as the A’s dropped two games in a three-game series with the Chicago White Sox.
The White Sox lead the majors with 115 losses, but that didn’t seem to matter when they beat Oakland 4-3 on Sunday.
Now the Athletics are simply trying to focus on the positives of a season that will result in the club missing the playoffs for the fourth year in a row.
One of those positives has been Brent Rooker, who clubbed his 37th home run of the campaign on Sunday. He also has 107 RBIs and is batting .301 this year, all single-season career highs. Rooker did hit .316 in 2020 when he was with the Minnesota Twins, but he played just seven games.
“He continues to impress,” Oakland manager Mark Kotsay said of Rooker. “I think you’ve got to include this guy in the Silver Slugger conversation with that.”
The A’s rarely visit the Cubs, as they will be playing at Wrigley Field for the first time since August 2019.
