BRAVES vs. CUBS- Official Full Game Highlights (September 14) - 2026 MLB Season

For the Cubs, they continue to try and nail down a playoff spot. Ideally, they claim that top spot and they get home field advantage first round of the playoffs as we head into the final 12 games of the season. Braves, who right now sit atop the National League Eastern Division standings. As they close in on a division title, their magic number is 5. And tonight, David Peterson will take the mound for the Cubs. Last time out, Tuesday in Milwaukee. A lot of traffic, 4-30, allowed 6 hits, 3 walks, but he got a couple of double plays and allowed just the one run. Craig Council would love to get some length out of Peterson here tonight. What a way to bring up the designated hitter tonight, Drake Baldwin. No out there. Baldwin smokes that. A slider to right field for the game's first hit. 86 miles an hour on this slider, but it stays inner third to Drake Baldwin. Left on left, you're going to try to get that ball away, but instead, a lot of the strike zone for the Drake to work with. And now Matt Olson, 5 for 24 against Peterson in his career. Four of those hits have been home runs. Swag and a miss. Struck him out. Got him on a curve. And there's one away. You think Peterson, you think about his sinker. That's a pretty good curveball here. You see that spike grip. Way off balance. So a tough task, no doubt, tonight for Reynaldo Lopez. It will be. Second start back now since he came off the I.L. and dealing with the knee issue. He did face the Cubs back in May, but that was out of the bullpen. He threw an inning and two thirds on May 14th. One of the most dangerous hitters in the league, Pete Crow Armstrong. Get him out on one pitch. And that's important because Reynaldo has struggled in the first frame this season. Highest ERA of any inning at six and three quarters. Slicing liner and a right center. Harris collects quickly and fires it in. Suzuki is aboard in front of Michael Bush. Yeah, it's a little inside-out swing and dumps it into right center. Harris playing around towards left center. Had to really get on his horse to get to this ball and keep Suzuki to a single. Michael Bush, 19 homers on the year, climbs in. Swing and a miss. Curveball. Lopez had Michael Bush out in front. So he saw the one curveball that he offered at. So why not give it another shot? He went for it and Bush also went for it and came up in. Michael Harris digging in. He's been particularly effective against breaking balls. Leads Major League Baseball 28 extra base hits off of breaking balls this year. First ground ball, and it gets out into center field. Ramirez diving, but he could not stop it. Three hits yesterday and now a single to start in Chicago. So he does get that two-seamer, but he doesn't get it in the way that he did to Matt Olsen. It ends up covering a lot of the plate, and Michael hits it hard there. 100 miles an hour back up the middle. Mauricio Dubon, the batter. On the ground, softly hit. Ramirez to Horner for one. Back to first, two. Four, six, three. Those double plays. David Peterson induced two double plays in his last start over in Milwaukee. Nice play by Ramirez. He got the ball to Horner quickly, and in a good spot. Chest high, and Niko had some momentum behind the throw, and he doubled to first. Four, six, three, double play. He in half first up. Most runs a game the last 100 seasons. 5.33 in the majors. That's ripped to right. Rips that Super Bowl off the wall, and he's in his second. It's a double. The best kind of double. A leadoff double here to get things started in the bottom of the second. 102.9 on your dial as Ian Happ smokes this one to right. A little slider. Didn't do much. Just kind of stayed up and out over the plate. And the Cubs start out the inning with Ian at second base. Niko Horner will bat with a man in scoring position. Lines of base set to right center. Happ had to hold up, thinking the ball might be caught by the second baseman, and advances only to third. Niko a sharp single. Cubs at first and third. Nobody out. Second inning, nothing-nothing game, and the batter is Michael Conforto. And he got him. Another changeup. Second strikeout for Lopez. Great job pitching to the scouting reporter. We talk about this guy being a platoon player, but what he has done so well against righties, he has hammered the slider. Well, the slider's the best pitch for Ronaldo Lopez. Ramirez drops his bat. He'll take his base, and they're loaded up for Carson Kelly. First real big moment of tonight's game has arrived. A weird spin out to short to second. They get one. Safe at first. Kelly beats it out, and the run scores. Cubs lead one to nothing. Kelly had to really hustle as Kim the shortstop and Aldis the second baseman made that play very quickly. That and good hustle down the line. It's been a hot hitter of late. Last 16 games, he's hit eight home runs with 15 RBIs. In to score is Horner. He's headed to the plate. He's in to score. Hugs, and it's 3-0. We're going to get Carson Kelly some oxygen. A little off-speed pitch again to Pete. He stays back long enough. That right arm stays on the bat, and he kind of one-arms his ball and goes out and hooks it. He hits it right over Olsen's head at first. Once it goes past Olsen, it's going down in the corner. Kelly scores all the way from first. He makes it home. Nico helps him up at home plate. That one drives in, too. So, David Peterson's been handed a three-run lead, and here's Ha-Sung Kim, and that is strike three. Kim is gone. Strikeout number two. Kim walks away, says something to Paul Clemens, the umpire, as if to say, Are you sure that hit the corner? Definitely making a commitment hard in on these righty hitters here early. Here comes Drake Baldwin. Swing and a miss. And Peterson has struck out three. One of his best breaking balls of the night. Sharp slider. A swinging strike three to Baldwin. Lead off walk. Second walk allowed by Reynaldo Lopez. Boy, Lopez throwing a lot of off-speed stuff. The majority of his pitches have been off-speed. There goes the runner. Pitch is outside. Throw to second. And Michael Bush has stolen base number three on the season. Well, you know, it was part of the pregame conversation that they could run against this club with Bushy stealing bags. He got a real nice jump. I mean, Murphy got a good pitch to work with. Had no real shot at him. Ozzie diving stop. He bobbled it, but still made the play. Excellent effort by Ozzie Allby. This was close. He did a nice job of readjusting. First of all, to get to the ball, right? Go full extension. But right here, that little bit of an issue, that is a great recovery to still make a good throw. If that ball bounces, he's probably safe. On the play, Bush advances to third. And now there are two down. Niko Lash to base it into center his first time. In the air, right field, slicing. Acuna falls. Base hit. Bush in to score. The stolen base ends up producing a run, and it's four zip. And now here's Michael Conforto. Conforto struck out his first time. Fly ball curling down the right side. There's Horner sprinting around third. Goes in. Conforto to nothing. Wasn't a changeup, but it was an off-speed breaking ball, and Conforto was all over it. Wrigley is rockin' and rollin' as Conforto delivers. Niko scores all the way from first. Comes with another run here in his third inning. Another good inning for the Cubs offense. Cubs have given David Peterson five runs to lean on. Has had a base runner in every inning. Yeah, he has had some traffic, but this is as good as he's looked for me. I think his stuff is really good here tonight. Olsen down on strikes. Peterson gets the strikeout as Olsen fans for the second time, and the batter is Ozzie Albee. And down goes Albee's, and that is strikeout number five for Peterson. Elevated hitter gets the job done. And it's a 1-2-3 top of the fourth inning. He cracked a two-run double his last time up. Line drive, base hit, right field. PCA with his second knock of the night. Pete's starting to heat up while he's solid contact. There he goes. Pitch is a ball. Throw to second. Stolen base. And PCA inches closer to 40-40. It's number 37. I didn't think he got a great jump. He's so quick, right? He goes from zero to 60 with that snap of your fingers. So, Riley at first. One down, Coombe here in the top of the pit. 5-0 Cubs. The batter, Sean Murphy. 1-2, strike three. Murphy throws in. That's a half dozen strikeouts now for David Peterson. Yeah, he's got the eye of the tiger out there tonight. David Peterson does it again. Banging away at that inside corner. This one well struck. Harris back. Track. Wall. Up against the Ivy. Taking extra bases away from Ian Happ. Now, Michael has played such an excellent center field. A little bit of a different challenge here when you're going up against the wall here in Wrigley because of the Ivy. And once again, just Michael getting it done. Matt Olson. Peterson has had his number so far here tonight. Two times up. Two punch outs. Olson knew it. He went inside on him and struck him out with the sinker. That's seven punch outs. Yeah, they beat him with the breaking ball the first two times. This is a great call by Carson Kelly. Change up the look a little bit. Go heater and lock him up. Matt Olson goes down for the third time. Braves don't score. It's on to the bottom of inning number six. Kelly rifles it the other way and smacked it into right for a single. His first hit of the night. Two outs. And the inning continues. Here comes PCA. High fly ball. Here's your MVP. This company, a double single home run with four trips to the plate tonight. Unbelievable. Missed into this ground. Home run number 42 for Pete Grow Armstrong. You hope that this wave that Harris has been on here in the last three days continues to the end of the season and into the postseason. He's been hitting everything in sight lately. And David Peterson, tremendous here tonight. He'll get a good hand. And again, a round of applause from the manager. And the fans will follow suit as they rise. The big lefty on point tonight. Dubon hits it sharply. But Bregman makes a nice play. They can't complete. It pops out on Bush. And now Harris is going to get to third. So the Braves try to put together a little rally here in the seventh. One down for Sean Murphy. This one is fair. On to second for one. Murphy beats it out. And the Braves are on the board as Harris crosses home plate. The Braves had to fight for this one run. The first one to get across the board. Remember the throw from Bregman, which allowed Michael Harris to get to third. And then Sean Murphy having a leg out this ground ball and just barely beating the throw. And now we're going to have a pinch hitter here. Mike Yastrzemski will step in for Hassan Kim. This one in play and driven. Left center. Deep. Seven to three. Two run shot for Yams. Peer pressure gets to him and back it comes. Mike Yastrzemski with all the sauce here against the Cutters. He drives it to the opposite field and out and over by a pretty wide margin. The Braves put a dent in the scoreboard with a three-run seventh inning. Trying to get something together quickly. Braves are trailing seven-nothing at one point. Now a seven-three game. So need something big here in the eighth inning. Rolison running into some trouble here. But right now the Braves threatening. Might have broken its back. Bregman to second for one. And a first two. Just what he was looking for. Yep. That'll clean it up. It's time to go around the horn. And they do indeed get their man at first base. Not particularly close. So here comes Pete Cronenstrom. He's already doubled, singled, and homered. He's driven in four. Line drive. Right center field. Acuna picks it up. And PCA with his fourth hit of the night. It's his seventh four-hit game of the year. That's the most of the major. Ryan Zephyr Jones. Yeah. Strikeout right up over 31 percent. That's way above league average. League average is 22.1 percent. The goal here is twofold. One, finish him off. And two, do it quickly. Don't waste too many pitches. First and second. No one out. Just got to stay away from those double plays. Checks. When did he go? You bet. Struck him out. It's Mike Yastrzemski. Yastrzemski with a two-run homer in the seventh. It is high. They're going to challenge. But they're going to lose it. And the bases are going to be loaded for Ronald Acuna Jr. On the ground. Cornered. A second for one. That's a meeting. And the Cubs have a victory in game one of this very important series.