Milwaukee Brewers at Chicago Cubs

CHICAGO – Alex Bregman could not help but smile as he rounded third base and headed home for the third time on Monday night. Maybe the home run came off a looping pitch from a position player – Andrew Vaughn of the Brewers, in this case – but the shot into the sea of delirious fans in Wrigley Field’s left-field bleachers counted all the same. The blast from Bregman in the eighth inning of a 17-3 romp over the Cubs’ rivals from Milwaukee served as an exclamation point to cap off a record-breaking evening in the power department. The North Siders set a single-game franchise record with nine home runs and established a National League mark for a calendar month with 62 homers in August. “It’s pretty awesome,” Bregman said. Bregman led the charge with three home runs – his second career three-homer game, with both coming a few weeks apart – but had plenty of company. Tyrone Taylor and Nico Hoerner went back to back in the first. Seiya Suzuki went back to back with Bregman in the fourth. Carson Kelly got in on the action, along with Matt Shaw and Michael Conforto. It was an emphatic win that came as the NL Wild Card-leading Cubs try to pull back into the NL Central race with the Brewers. Milwaukee still holds a seven-game lead over Chicago, but the teams are in the midst of seven games against each other in a 10-day span. It is a chance for the Cubs to make things interesting. “You could kind of feel their energy,” said Cubs starter Clay Holmes, who went six shutout innings. “After a couple series that we lost, you could tell that the position-player group really wanted to come out strong. And you can feel that. To be able to put a zero up there in the first and kind of let them do their thing was nice.” Go figure that Pete Crow-Armstrong, who ripped five homers in the previous two games, was not one of the players to go yard in the win. Five blasts came against Brewers lefty Kyle Harrison, while Vaughn (primarily a first baseman) surrendered the last three as he covered the final two frames of the blowout for Milwaukee. “The position-player stuff gets a little ridiculous at the end there, honestly,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “That’s great we set a record. And the guys aren’t going to stop hitting. Guys are not going to stop hitting. They’re going to take advantage of it, and they should. They absolutely should. We’ll take it.”