I get it, blaming the manager is the easy thing to do and honestly before Craig Counsell spoke following Sunday's bullpen collapse he should have been flamed for that eighth inning. However, at the end of the day the Cubs had a four-run lead with six outs to get and there's no other way to break this down other than those relievers simply had to do a better job. No excuse to implode the way they did.
The Cubs had a 6-2 lead after Kyle Tucker launched a three-run bomb in the top half of the eighth. Lefty Caleb Thielbar, who did escape a jam in the seventh inning, began the bottom of the eighth. Some argue that maybe he should not have gone back out there after the high-emotion spot the previous inning. But I can't really argue with a lefty facing back-to-back left-handed hitters, who have historically been bad against LHP.
Alek Thomas has a career .454 OPS vs. LHP and Corbin Carroll is a below-average hitter vs. lefties compared to being a very damn good hitter vs. righties. So, no issue keeping Thielbar in. Throw strikes dude. The lefty threw nine pitches in the eighth inning, eight of them were balls. Awful.
At that point Counsell went to Eli Morgan. He got the first batter he faced and then gave up four straights, giving up the lead and allowed a few more runs to dig the Cubs a deeper hole. Entering Sunday, Morgan had three shutout innings out of the bullpen, only giving up a pair of hits, with strikeouts and no walks. He was bad. He had to be better and he wasn't.
The big issue is that fans were wondering where in the world was Julian Merryweather. The hard-throwing righty was a steady reliever for the 2023 Cubs and looked to return to that form in spring training after his injury-riddled 2024 season. However, Counsell said Merryweather was not available after he had warmed up two times previously in the series against the Diamondbacks.
Per Craig Counsell, Julian Merryweather was unavailable in today’s game. He had been up twice in the bullpen in two separate games of the series.
— Taylor McGregor (@Taylor_McGregor) March 30, 2025
You could say, why did Counsell waste Merryweather warming up, costing his availability for Sunday. Well, this goes back to pitchers simply not doing their job. The only reason Merryweather was rapidly warming up earlier in the series was because Porter Hodge was getting into trouble and on Saturday night Ryan Pressly almost blew the game in the ninth inning. If those guys have smoother outings, then Merryweather isn't getting up and he's fresh for a scenario like Sunday's eighth inning.
Plain and simple, Thielbar and Morgan just had to be better. It's a four-run lead and they could not get the job done. Oh and this isn't letting Nate Pearson off the hook either. He once again gave up a pair of runs in relief in Arizona. Would not be surprised if he's optioned as soon as Monday.
Pearson had good numbers with the Cubs last summer, but now he's walking more guys and getting hit hard. Can't win with that. He walked four batters in 26.1 innings in 2024 with the Cubs and so far in 2025 Pearson has already walked four in 4.1 innings. All four of those walks scored in Arizona.
We can talk about Jed Hoyer being more aggressive in free agency to secure Tanner Scott all day long. That does not change the fact that on Sunday those guys who came in from the bullpen were set up to get the job done and did not. It's on the players.
