ATLANTA — Manager Craig Counsell thought going into Thursday’s series finale against the Atlanta Braves that the Chicago Cubs would have a hard time getting four innings out of right-hander Ben Brown.
Brown is still building up his pitch count with his transition from the bullpen to the rotation, requiring high efficiency facing Major League Baseball’s best offense to give them that many outs. The Cubs want to be cautious with Brown, though Counsell acknowledged pregame, “it’d be great if he had an outing like he did in Texas, but to get through four innings in 45 pitches is not something you normally see.”
Well, Brown needed a few more pitches this time, but the 26-year-old delivered a stellar performance to help the Cubs avoid getting swept at Truist Park. Brown again tossed four shutout innings, surrendering just one hit while walking one and striking out seven on 65 pitches. The Cubs did just enough to scratch a run across against Braves lefty Chris Sale, and the bullpen kept tossing up zeros en route to a 2-0 victory to snap a four-game losing streak.
“They’re a really good offense: How well can we slow the game down and execute pitches with runners on base? I think that’s something that can get lost,” Brown said. “The game speeds up and you start to miss pitches, but ultimately you just keep making pitch after pitch after pitch against these really advanced hitters, results will come.”
The development of his change-up and incorporating a sinker has given Brown more to work with beyond his go-to elite fastball-curveball combination. In an encouraging sign Thursday, Brown kept throwing his change-up despite the pitch, in his estimation, being the worst it has been all year. But he still threw it “so honestly, that’s a big win,” Brown said.
Brown recorded four batted-ball outs on his change-up and sinker and even flashed the pitches to open an at-bat three times.
“I really believe because he’s added a couple pitches that it gives the hitter something else to consider,” Counsell said, “instead of this or that, it’s this or this or this, and that’s a big difference.”
Pitching coach Tommy Hottovy equated Brown’s role this season to a fork in the road, though not in a do-this-or-things-won’t-go-well way. Rather, he’s on the right path. Being moved into a starting role is merely veering him on a different track, and if he goes back into a bullpen role at some point, Brown and the Cubs know he can manage that.
“He’s handling it phenomenally because of the work he did this offseason,” Hottovy told the Tribune Thursday. “I think he put himself in such a good place, both physically and mentally, to handle whatever was thrown at him. The biggest misconception for young pitchers especially is coming into the season thinking, ‘I am a starter, I am this, I am that’ because things change. And I think he was like, ‘No, what I’m going to do is work on building this resiliency around myself, around my routine that allows me to be flexible and still keep what I do really, really well,’ and then he lets the role help dictate that.”
Through two starts, Brown has given up only one hit and, importantly, two walks with 10 strikeouts in eight shutout innings.
His upside has always been tantalizing as a starter, if he could find a way to put together outings more consistency. Too often a one-inning implosion derailed him last year. Brown’s shift in mentality has been evident since the start of spring training. He embraced the unknowns of how the Cubs might use him this year and accepted responsibility for not handling last year’s shifting roles very well.
The Cubs offense hasn’t been at its best this trip. They again went hitless with runners in scoring position (0 for 7) and left seven on base. The group did just enough against Sale and a tough Braves bullpen to avoid getting shut out for the third time in five games. Ian Happ, following a leadoff walk off Sale in the sixth, advanced to third on Braves shortstop Ha-Seong Kim’s throwing error on an attempted forceout at second. With runners on the corners, Matt Shaw drove in Happ on a grounder to Kim for a Cubs lead.
“We needed a little bit of a mistake there for us to score a run, and a pitcher like that and as good as he’s been, sometimes you need that,” Happ said.
The Cubs weren’t able to tack on any more runs in the sixth, but Happ added an insurance run in the eighth with his 10th home run of the year. All three games in the series were tightly contested in a matchup between the two teams with the best records in the National League. It would not be a surprise to see the Cubs and Braves cross paths in the postseason.
“They’re doing it on all sides of the ball right now, and we played three really competitive games with them, faced the back end of their bullpen in those first two, and we were in those games with opportunities,” Happ said. “So getting out of here with a win and some momentum, it feels good.”
