The season-long celebration of a century of baseball at Wrigley Field continued on Sunday, which meant that both teams were in vintage uniforms from the '60s. The game itself was vintage Wrigley Field in that the road team won and was in complete control of the game throughout, as the Braves got up by 7 on the Cubs early and (except for a blip in the 8th inning) didn't let up, eventually winning another high scoring game 10-7.
Lost in the show of offensive firepower was that Julio Teheran had a decent day on the mound for Atlanta today. It wasn't spectacular, but with the way that the Braves were hitting over this weekend, he didn't need to be; he just had to not wet the bed. Indeed, Teheran kept the bed clean, as he ate 7 innings with 6 strikeouts and only 2 walks. However, his only two egregious mistakes resulted in 2-run homers for the Cubs.
Of course, one of the main Cubs involved in today's slugfest was none other than Chris Coghlan. For the third day in a row, Coghlan was a major thorn in the Braves' side, as he went 2-4 with a homer and 2 RBI, and scored 2 runs as well. I'm sure that the Braves are not going to miss seeing Coghlan, and odds are that this is the last time that Atlanta will have to deal with him.
Meanwhile, one man who is probably hating to leave Chicago is Chris Johnson, who had himself another lovely day at the plate. He went 3-4 with 3 RBI, and those 3 RBI all came on another mammoth homer in the 3rd inning. This one landed in dead center field, and Johnson's 3rd dinger of the series broke the game open for the Braves. This was after hits from Gerald Laird and Julio Teheran made it 3-0 in the 2nd, and a single from Jason Heyward in the at-bat that preceded Chris Johnson's made it 4-0. Now, the Braves were up 7 and cruising to victory with their ace on the mound.
Indeed, it seemed like this was going to be a complete laugher of a game by the 7th inning, which is when Tommy La Stella joined in on the fun and hit a bases-loaded double that cleared the bases and put 3 more runs on the board for the Braves, making it 10-2 at that point. Surely, the game was completely out of reach, right?
Although the graph below says that it was never in doubt, it sure felt like it might have been, and that was thanks to a pretty bad relief outing for Luis Avilan in the 8th inning. Avilan faced 3 batters. He didn't retire a single one, and he left the game with the bases loaded, which meant that it was time for Shae Simmons to clean up another mess. Shae struck out the first batter he faced, but he walked Ryan Sweeney to bring in run #5 for the Cubs.
Shae was then pulled for Jordan Walden, and Walden eventually got out of the inning but not before he got dinged by John Baker with a 2-run double that made it 10-7.
Thanks to the middle of the bullpen, what was initially a complete walkover of a game for the Braves inexplicably turned into a save situation. However, the Braves still have Craig Kimbrel for those situations, and he restored order in the bottom of the 9th by easily mowing down the 1st 3 batters he saw to end the game, giving him his 29th save and the Braves their 52nd win after a 2nd straight offensive onslaught.
<iframe src="http://www.fangraphs.com/graphframe.aspx?config=0&static=936186&type=livewins&num=0&h=450&w=450&date=2014-07-13&team=Cubs&dh=0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="450" width = "450" style="border:1px solid black;"></iframe><br /><span style="font-size:9pt;">Source: <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/livewins.aspx?date=2014-07-13&team=Cubs&dh=0&season=2014">FanGraphs</a></span>