What's the Opposite of a Pyrrhic Victory? Seiya Suzuki Rediscovers the Barrel in Cubs Loss

Earlier this week, we talked at length about the specific problems that have led to a massive power outage by Seiya Suzuki in the second half of this season. Suzuki entered Thursday night's game against the Mets having homered just twice since the All-Star break, on July 18 and August 6. As hopeless as the numbers have looked, though, I closed that piece on a relatively hopeful note:

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The good news, here, is that Suzuki is still generally on time in the box, and that his swing is physically intact. He needs to change something in his in-the-moment preparation, to see or anticipate the pitch better and catch it flush more consistently. That's no easy tweak, as the nearness of the first miss above shows. Hitting requires a high-speed precision that can sometimes feel superhuman. However, the change needed here is minute, and Suzuki might well be on the cusp of breaking out of this funk at just the right time, in a very big way.

Suzuki made that look prescient Thursday night, just in time. In the preantepenultimate game of the regular season, he took the date to which you needed to go back to get two of his home runs in frame from July 18 to September 25, slamming two different pitches from rookie hurler Nolan McLean into the left-field bleachers. Suzuki has been on time all along, but he locked in on two offerings that McLean left in locations he didn't intend, and finally found the elusive match between his best range of swing planes and the pitch shape and location he was getting.

The Mets still won the game, 8-5. Other than Suzuki's two bombs (responsible, together, for four runs), the only Cubs offense came courtesy of Dansby Swanson, who hit a homer of his own as he quietly surges through the tape to finish the season. (Quietly, Swanson has gotten to 50 extra-base hits for the second time in his three-year Cubs tenure, and is slugging a robust .442 since August 1.) Shota Imanaga gave up all eight runs, as Craig Counsell tried to get him through a ragged start and ensure that he had the appropriate number of pitches to carry into his down time before pitching in the Wild Card Series. That's bad news, and Imanaga doesn't seem to be at the top of his game.

On balance, though, Suzuki's power outburst is more important than anything else that happened. If he can get hot—and particularly if he can be a reliable source of power in the middle of the batting order—the Cubs are suddenly fine, after all. There's been considerable anxiety lately, and it's not unfounded, but the team just needed one or two players to turn around their negative trends in order to take some real optimism into the postseason. This week, they've gotten:

• Daniel Palencia back onto a big-league mound, with his shoulder and his stuff looking intact;
• Matthew Boyd pitching more like his first-half self; and
• Suzuki breaking out of his long power slump with a thunderclap of a game.

Friday, they hope to reactivate Kyle Tucker and slot him in as the designated hitter, giving the lineup its greatest sense of completeness in several weeks. One luxury the team afforded itself with their hot start was to meander a bit through September, and although this would have been a costly period of healing and consolidation if the Brewers hadn't run away and hid with the division weeks ago, the real damage done by even four months of uneven play has been relatively limited. The team is walking a highwire into the weekend, needing to keep people healthy, get good news on Cade Horton's prognosis, and see (more) good things from Suzuki and/or Tucker. Already, though, they've had a better week than their record would indicate.