Cubs vs Cardinals ended the way the good ones always seem to at Wrigley: quietly, and then all at once. Clay Holmes and three relievers combined on a three-hitter Friday, Seiya Suzuki put a three-run homer into the equation, and Chicago handled St. Louis 3-0. That was the entire scoring summary. One swing, nine innings of pitching, go home.
Holmes was the story before the ball ever left Suzuki's bat. A first home start carries a weight that road starts do not, and anyone who has watched a pitcher walk out of the Wrigley bullpen into that noise for the first time knows it. He handled it. The line reads clean, and the three relievers behind him kept the plate uncluttered the rest of the way. Three hits, total, from a Cardinals lineup that has spent a century and change finding ways to make this particular ballpark uncomfortable.
That is the part worth sitting with. Cubs and Cardinals is the oldest continuous rivalry in the National League, running back to the 1890s, and it has produced more ordinary Friday afternoons than epics. This was one of the ordinary ones that still counts. A shutout is a shutout in August.
Suzuki, meanwhile, keeps doing the thing he was brought over from Hiroshima to do back before the 2022 season: change the shape of a game with one at-bat. Three runs of support against a division rival is not a fluke of contact, it is the reason he is in the middle of that order.
What comes next is immediate. These two are back at it Saturday at 2:21 PM ET at Wrigley, day baseball, same rivalry, presumably a very different mood in the visiting clubhouse. St. Louis got three hits and had almost nothing to show in the way of hard contact. Teams that get shut out in the opener of a series tend to come out swinging in the second game, or they tend to look exactly the same. I want to see which.
The thing I am watching is Holmes. One good home start is one good home start. The pattern is what tells you whether the Cubs have something in him or just a nice Friday.
