The Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs will have the same mission when they meet on Monday: kick-start an in-and-out offense.
The Phillies have scored in only three of their last 45 innings and have been shut out twice while losing four of their last five games.
The Cubs took a step in the right direction Sunday when they overcame an early five-run deficit for a 7-6 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Carson Kelly’s walk-off single in the ninth inning.
Chicago scored only three runs combined while losing the first two games of the series before rallying to avoid their first home sweep by the Pirates since 2017.
Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sanchez (1-1, 1.65 ERA) is set to face Cubs right-hander Javier Assad (1-0, 0.00) on Monday night in the first contest of a three-game series in Philadelphia.
“Every day is a must-win, right?” Kelly said. “We just have to keep putting good days on top of good days. It’s a long season.”
Cubs first baseman Michael Busch broke an 0-for-30 skid with a two-run, pinch-hit single to tie the game at 6-6 in the eighth on Sunday.
“No matter the ups, no matter the downs, you keep grinding,” Busch said.
The Phillies’ slump prompted manager Rob Thomson to move Brandon Marsh into the cleanup spot behind the Big Three — Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper — and drop Alec Bohm to seventh in the series against the Arizona Diamondbacks this past weekend.
Marsh, Schwarber, Harper and Turner each homered, but the Phillies lost two of three games, including 4-3 on Sunday.
“The biggest thing for us is not feeling like we need to go do something,” Schwarber said after going deep in a 4-3 win Saturday. “We know that we have a really good offense.”
Sanchez enters Monday’s game after a 6-0 loss at San Francisco on Tuesday, when he gave up four runs (two earned) on 11 hits in five innings. The 11 hits were one short of a career high, and the eight two-out hits were a career high.
“These are just bad days, and these days happen throughout the course of the season,” Sanchez said via an interpreter. “This is a long season, and it’s just starting.
“I got them to two strikes, but I couldn’t put them away. I don’t worry too much about it. I know what I have to do to get back on track.”
The Cubs have knocked around Sanchez in their two previous meetings, both in 2024. Sanchez is 0-1 with a 10.38 ERA against them.
Assad will make his second start of the season after a strong first outing on Tuesday, when he pitched in 5 2/3 scoreless innings in a 9-2 victory at the Tampa Bay Rays. He gave up one hit, an infield single, struck out three and walked two.
Assad was recalled from Triple-A Iowa the day before to join the rotation after left-hander Matthew Boyd (biceps) was placed on the injured list and right-hander Cade Horton suffered a season-ending elbow injury.
“Obviously, that’s not necessarily what you want,” Assad said through an interpreter about opening the season in the minors. “You want to be here. But those are things I can’t control, decisions I don’t make. I was down there working … just waiting for whenever an opportunity presented itself.”
Assad, who missed three months of the 2025 season with a left oblique strain, is 1-1 with a 5.84 ERA in three career appearances against the Phillies. His most recent was in a 9-6 loss on Sept. 25, 2024, when he gave up eight runs and three homers — including one to Turner — in 4 1/3 innings.
–Field Level Media
