Cubs News: Marcus Stroman dominates his way to victory

The Chicago Cubs have been in a funk. In fact, they have been so bad lately that they came into Monday’s action with the worst record of the National League.

The starting lineup they had for the series opener on Monday wasn’t overwhelming to the eye at first. They knew they needed a hero to get back in the win column. They got one.

Marcus Stroman took the mound for the Cubs five games after his best outing with the organization (a dominating performance against the New York Mets). He followed it up with an even better game in every way.

For one, he held a no-hitter through six innings against the Tampa Bay Rays. Wander Franco broke it up but that would end up being the only hit of the game. Of course, nobody scored either as he went 9.0 innings for the complete game shutout. He had eight strikeouts in the win.

The Chicago Cubs saw an elite game from Marcus Stroman on Monday.

This isn’t some bottom-feeder team that Stroman dominated either. You can make a claim for the Rays as the best team in baseball right now. Their offense is better than pretty much every offense that Stroman faces the rest of the year too which makes it even more impressive.

To shut down an elite team like that is not easy. Stroman has been amazing for the Cubs so far this year and he can definitively be called their ace. They can only hope that he continues to pitch like this for the long haul.

Chicago’s batting order gave him the minimum in terms of run support. They played good defense behind him but could only score one run. In the fourth inning, Mike Tauchman hit a sacrifice fly that scored Seiya Suzuki for the 1-0 lead. Stroman finished it off from there.

Now, the Cubs have a win to rally around. They beat a very good team to improve to 12-6 in series openers. The Rays aren’t going to go away quietly though. They have a record of 39-17 for a reason so we’ll see how they respond against the Cubs.

Stroman is the number one star of the game because of his performance but also because of the timing of it. The ace stood up and pitched at an extremely high level when his team needed someone to step up in a big way.