All signs were pointing toward the Chicago Cubs slipping deeper into despair on Thursday night.

Down three runs to the Athletics in the 9th and on the verge of suffering a third straight sweep at Wrigley Field, something had to give.

In true Cubs fashion, it was the offensive breakthrough they were waiting for. Try four runs — three of them with two outs — and a perhaps unfathomable comeback that ended in a Pete Crow-Armstrong walk-off bloop single.

The Cubs came out on top, 7-6, in a win that may be talked about for as long as this season goes on.

Here are three things we learned amid all that chaos:

What Just Happened?

Just as it was in the first two games of the series, the Cubs needed hitters to come through in high-leverage situations.

They went a combined 3-for-18 with RISP (.167) in the two losses. Thursday, they went 6-for-10. And that changed everything.

Ian Happ’s two-run home run in the 7th to cut the lead to three was just a precursor to how the rest of the night was going to go.

Happ came through again in the 9th with a double that drove in Michael Busch’s leadoff two-bagger. Nico Hoerner’s single moved Happ to third. He was caught stealing second to leave the Cubs without an out to wager, but that didn’t matter to Moises Ballesteros, Seiya Suzuki, Dansby Swanson and ultimately, Crow-Armstrong.

The Cubs finally showed signs of the contagious hitting that makes them elite. It came all at once, as if something clicked within them collectively.

If everything that happened before that moment lights the fire within them the rest of the way, so be it.

The PCA Rollercoaster

Pete Crow-Armstrong had one of the more juxtaposed games for a Cub in recent memory.

It started with Shea Langeliers’ two-run, inside-the-park home run in the 6th.

Crow-Armstrong lost what looked to be a routine fly ball in the Wrigley floodlights, staring in the sky with his arms shrugged at his sides as the ball landed some 10 feet behind him. Langeliers turned on the jets and slid home safely to beat Dansby Swanson’s off-the-mark throw home.

The runs were charged to Shota Imanaga and Crow-Armstrong’s defensive statistics thus did not take a hit, but it was a moment that clearly rattled him.

It didn’t rattle him enough, though, because he came up to bat the very next half-inning and smoked a 110-mph solo home run into right for his 9th of the season and the 50th of his career.

And of course, his walk-off single tied his wacky night neatly in a bow.

“We’ve stayed in the fight all year. We’ve been fighting through these last couple weeks,” he told reporters following the game. “This kind of stuff is exactly what we are capable of.”

Sho Me Something

The wind was blowing out at Wrigley Field on Thursday night, which typically doesn’t bode well for an Imanaga start.

Imanaga’s fly ball rate of 39.5% was the third-highest among qualified pitchers in 2025. He allowed 34 home runs last season, the third most in baseball.

He’s lowered the fly ball rate in 2026 (33.5%), but the home run ball has been an issue as of late – he allowed three in each of his last two starts and 10 total in May.

Imanaga had the extra challenge of facing an Athletics lineup that includes sluggers like Langeliers and Nick Kurtz, who can really destroy a ball when they want to.

Langeliers didn’t exactly destroy the ball in the 4th inning, but he got just enough of it to put it in the basket and give the Athletics the lead. The A’s designated hitter’s second home run was flukier and probably wouldn’t have happened on most nights.

But Imanaga unraveled after that, allowing a pair of solo shots to Tyler Soderstrom and Jonah Heim before exiting in the 7th. He finished with a line of six earned runs on six hits over six innings of work.

Imanaga’s ERA now sits at 4.74 on the season after 13 starts. It’s a pretty steep decline from how he began his season, and how he’ll adjust ahead of the trade deadline is certainly something to monitor.

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