Players Weekend features three themes this year, celebrating off-field interests, charities and causes, and the people who helped the players succeed. The Cubs leaned into category number two tonight, giving away a game to Seattle as an act of charity. Even the 2026 Seattle Mariners can still win the occasional game they don’t deserve. It’s still baseball after all.
The Cubs began by making things feel hopeless, with Pete Crow-Armstrong hitting a leadoff home run, Michael Busch hitting a hot-shot line drive for a double, and Alex Bregman pulling a fastball for a two-run dinger. The Cubs’ 3-0 lead before the Mariners had even set foot in the batter’s box set up a win as a nice feel-good story for Seattle.
After a characteristic lifeless first inning from the offense, Cubs starter Matthew Boyd did his hometown squad a solid by giving Josh Naylor a couple chances at his favorite high fastballs. Naylor took the second out to center field to get on base. Cubs catcher Carson Kelly then declined to challenge either of two strikes that were erroneously called balls in the course of Taylor Ward’s walk. Then, knowing that Cal Raleigh is chasing fastballs at his forehead lately, Boyd left one for him at the letters. Swinging a Players Weekend bat painted to look like a dead fish because he is not afraid of easy metaphors for his season, Cal crushed the cookie into the bullpen to tie the game at 3-3.
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Cole Young and Brendan Donovan teamed up for another run on a pair of singles. The 2026 Mariners have been so demoralizing that taking a one-run lead was received by their fans like winning the division. What a gift from the North Siders.
From there, the Cubs’ hitters decided it was their turn to chip in. Upon seeing the Mariners infield defense trying to screw things up with a pair of bad throws in the top of the third, Chicago’s next batters struck out on three pitches and hit a ball directly to the Mariners’ only reliable infielder, Cole Young. When Michael Busch forgot himself and turned a sharp line drive into a hustle double, Bregman and Happ very generously let a couple meatballs sail by while chasing two-strike pitches for a pair of punchouts.
With the offense unable to stop themselves from getting into scoring position in every inning but the second, the Cubs defense gifted the Mariners an insurance run in the fifth just in case Chicago scored by accident. Multiple Gold Glove winner Nico Hoerner airmailed a throw to let the light-hitting Brock Rodden get aboard; Matthew Boyd balked him to second; and PCA declined to hustle toward a water balloon into shallow center, allowing Rodden to score and give the Mariners a 5-3 lead.
But the Cubs’ three runs was all they’d score off Emerson Hancock, who danced around traffic all night, leaving after 5.2 with almost as many hard-hit balls as whiffs. The bulk of their 1 for 16 with RISP came against Hancock.
It did seem like it was coming a little too easy though, with Gabe Speier following Hancock with a strikeout and a very nice double play he started. So the Cubs made it at least seem like beating them would be hard. Facing Eduard Bazardo in the eighth, Happ brought the score back within one on a missile to the J-Rod Squad. They even let the drama build by loading the bases with two outs. This gets to the one actually good thing the Mariners did.
Seeing Bazardo fall behind 1-0, with the bases loaded in a one-run game, Cal challenged the next pitch.
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As I understand it, this is within the ABS margin of error yet remained a ball, putting Bazardo down 2-0. When Bazardo put another pitch within a hair’s breadth of the same spot, a reasonable person might not have challenged. But the situation demanded a mix of confidence and aggression, and Cal challenged again.
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So instead of 3-0, the count flipped to 2-1, and Bazardo took the give to spin it into a game-saving, inning-ending strikeout. For that gutsy but necessary challenge, Cal wins tonight’s Sun Hat Award. But the Cubs wanted to make it extra dramatic and let the Mariners have a walk-off. So even though he was down 0-2 after being late on 101- and 102-mph fastballs, Bregman took Andres Munoz deep for his second dinger of the night to tie the game at 5-5.
Come the 10th inning, it was Dan Wilson’s turn to get bailed out. Despite his sending Seranthony Dominguez to the mound, the Cubs didn’t score. With a ghost runner and zero outs, Dan even challenged a non-call of a HBP, apparently trying to get a runner who doesn’t matter on base to set up a double play. But Cubs’ pitcher Ryan Zeferjahn had executed with enough precision to avoid hitting the batter, ultimately letting him get the bunt down to move the runner to third. With Julio unable to get the ball past the pitcher either, the runner was still at third, now with two outs. For reasons passing all rationality, rather than pinch-hitting for the worst hitter on his roster, Dan Wilson left in Leo Rivas. But the Cubs wanted to give the little guy a win and let him walk it off on a little dink into the triangle.
So the Mariners got a freebie tonight thanks more to the Cubs’ largesse than their own competence. But they may win tomorrow more legitimately, for the Aceman cometh.
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