The Reds arrive at Wrigley Field with a little lift and a lot to prove. Cincinnati ended a three-game losing streak with a seven-run ninth against the Giants on Wednesday, then headed into a three-game Reds vs Cubs series that will be its last visit to Wrigley Field this season.
That makes the timing matter. The Cubs have already taken six of seven from Cincinnati this year, including a four-game sweep in May that pushed a winning streak to nine games and a split of sorts in the summer run that followed, when Chicago dropped the first game at Cincinnati on July 10 before winning the next two. For a series in late August, that is not just a memory; it is the backdrop.
The May series showed how quickly this matchup can tilt. The Cubs opened with walk-off wins of 5-4, 3-2 and 7-6, with the second and third games going 10 innings, then finished the sweep with an 8-3 win. In Cincinnati, the Cubs lost 4-0 on July 10, then answered with 5-3 and 8-4 wins. By the time the teams reached this week, Chicago had already built a 6-1 edge for the season.
That edge does not erase what Cincinnati did Wednesday, but it does frame it. The Reds’ seven-run ninth was the kind of burst that can reset a dugout for a night, yet it came after a stretch in which they had lost 13 of their last 20 and were still in last place. One inning can change a mood. It does not change the math.
The bigger absence is Hunter Greene, who is out after a second Tommy John surgery and is likely to miss the entirety of the 2027 season. Without him, the Reds are trying to survive the long grind of August and the rest of the schedule with less room for error, especially against a Cubs team that has already handled this matchup well and still has seven games left with the Brewers and three left against the Pirates.
After this trip to Wrigley Field, the teams will not meet there again this season. They still have three more games at Cincinnati on Sept. 18-20, which gives the Reds one more chance to answer the season series and the Cubs one more chance to make the gap wider. For now, the headline is simple: Cincinnati brought a fresh jolt into Chicago, but the numbers still belong to the Cubs.
