Game Recap: Cubs double up Giants as Japan tour continues

Darren Yamashita - USA Today Sports

Dustin Riese - Senior Writer - 10 hours ago

TOKYO—After the Cubs prospects took care of business against the Angels on Saturday night, the Chicago Cubs continued their Japan tour with a Sunday morning affair. This time, the Yomiuri Giants took their crack against the Cubs, hoping to bounce back from their loss against the Dodgers the day before.

Once again, offense was at a premium as six total runs were scored in the contest, and all six came in one inning. Fortunately, it was the Cubs finding a way to get the job done, as a four-run fifth was all the offense they would need as Chicago doubled up the Giants 4-2. Unlike Friday, where Craig Counsell elected to go with a bullpen game, this was more of a standard game in terms of pitching as right-hander Jameson Taillon got the start for the Cubs.

Hoping to get close to five innings out of him, Taillon delivered by giving the Cubs 4 1/3 impressive innings, allowing one run on four hits. He walked two and struck out four before giving way to Daniel Palencia to close out the fifth. Not only was Taillon strong, but so was Matthew Boyd, who entered the game in the sixth and closed out the final four innings, striking out six and allowing just three hits.

Matt Boyd fanned 6 through 4 innings of work in the Tokyo Dome ⛽️ pic.twitter.com/2VrilU28fU
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) March 16, 2025

Opposing Taillon and the Cubs was Foster Griffin, as he, too, had a great start. Griffin gave the Giants five innings of six strikeout baseball, but was touched up for the four runs allowed as he started to run out of gas toward the end of his outing. Despite limiting the Cubs damage through four innings, Griffin did have some command issues in the first as he walked Ian Happ and Seiya Suzuki before finding a way to escape trouble.

The Cubs kept the pressure on Griffin in the second, with Dansby Swanson coming away with a leadoff double only to be left stranded on the bases. Although it took the Giants three innings to show signs of life, they began to get to Taillon in the third, with Makoto Kadowaki and Yoshihiro Maru picking up a pair of singles only to come away empty.

Yomiuri kept the pressure on Taillon in the fourth as he put a pair of runners on base off of walks but managed to work around another jam to keep things scoreless. It took five innings for either offense to get rolling, but once they did, the runs began to come quickly, as all six runs were scored in the fifth.

Four of those runs came from the Cubs as their offense finally started to show signs of life against Griffin and him searching for answers. What began with a leadoff double by Pete Crow-Armstrong turned into a 1-0 lead as Gage Workman drove him home with a single. A Happ single followed the Workman single ahead of a Kyle Tucker walk, and suddenly, the bases were loaded with one down.

With a wild pitch pushing home the Cubs second run of the inning, it was Matt Shaw coming through with the big hit as his two-run single not only extended the Cubs lead to 4-0, but it proved to be the game winning hit for the Cubs. The Giants responded in the bottom half of the fifth as Yuta Izuguchi led things off with a single before a two-out walk, which kept the inning alive for the Giants offense.

Hoping to escape things without damage, Palencia came close to getting the job done only to have Kazuma Okamoto come through with a clutch RBI double to cut the deficit in half 4-2. Those would be the Giants' only runs of the game as Palencia finished off the inning without further damage before handing things over to Boyd the rest of the way.

The Giants had a chance to make things interesting in the bottom of the sixth by picking up a pair of singles, but it was a costly baserunning mistake by Raito Nakayama that killed that momentum as Boyd picked him off to end the threat. Yomiuri also put some traffic on the bases in the seventh and were unable to cash in as the Cubs took care of the Giants 4-2 and are now set to open the season with the Dodgers on Tuesday.

Although the win is a good thing, there are some concerns about the offense, as it hasn't looked that good through two games. The Cubs only managed to have six hits in the game from six different players, and Shaw paced the Cubs' offense with two RBIs.