Cubs’ resilience shines again vs. Dodgers as win streak hits 10

LOS ANGELES — The characters keep changing, the injuries keep mounting and yet, for the 2026 Chicago Cubs, the outcomes don’t change.

On Friday night, in front of a sold-out Dodger Stadium, against the two-time defending champs, it was Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner dazzling on defense and coming through on offense. It was Alex Bregman delivering his first big moment. And it was unheralded reliever Ryan Rolison stepping up for a pitching staff left with few options. It all helped fuel a thrilling, come-from-behind 6-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Cubs have won 10 in a row, adding to their longest winning streak since their championship-winning season in 2016.

“It’s been so many different guys throughout this stretch here,” Swanson said. “That’s the whole purpose of having a team. We have a collective, great unit and a bunch of guys who want to compete and enjoy doing it together.”

The Cubs have placed eight pitchers on the injured list this month, the latest being late-inning reliever Caleb Thielbar, who landed on the shelf earlier Friday with a hamstring strain. For the opener of this weekend series, Cubs manager Craig Counsell had only three relievers available. And when Jameson Taillon exited after five innings, he needed Rolison to give him as much as possible.

He wound up pitching three scoreless innings despite going 10 days since his last appearance, taking the game from a 4-0 deficit to a 4-4 tie. After Rolison exited, Pete Crow-Armstrong led off the ninth with a single, Swanson brought him in with a two-run homer and Corbin Martin, another bullpen arm the Cubs weren’t counting on for much this season, converted the save.

“Some days it’s defense, some days it’s homers, pitching, relievers, starters, baserunning, preparation, things we talked about in our scouting reports that show up in the game — it’s kind of just been a little bit of everything, which is really fun,” Taillon said. “When we’re playing well, it’s just such a fun brand of baseball to watch. I sit there for four days in between my starts and just get to watch, and, I mean, we put the ball in play, we run the bases, we play defense, we throw strikes and just a lot of the little things we do really well.”

Short-handed as they might be, the Cubs are tied for the third-highest run-differential in the majors, rank second in runs per game, have put up the sixth-lowest ERA and grade out as the best defensive team in the sport.

The latter skill shined on Friday.

On a night when the Dodgers converted two impressive outs at home, the Cubs were somehow the better defensive team. Former Cub Kyle Tucker was the victim of two highlight-reel plays — a deep fly ball that Seiya Suzuki snatched near the right-field fence in the third and a line that Swanson dove to catch in the sixth. Two more followed in the seventh. First, Suzuki and Hoerner teamed up for a perfect relay to nail Andy Pages as he tried to stretch a triple. Two pitchers later, Hoerner ranged to his left, leaped to barehand a ball that bounced off the glove of first baseman Michael Busch and made a perfect throw to Rolison as he was sprinting to cover first base, barely getting the speedy Hyeseong Kim.

Hoerner, normally stoic, couldn’t contain his laughter.

“He’s unbelievable,” Rolison said. “Just watching him play every night — the plays that he makes, the leader he is in the clubhouse. He’s a great teammate.”

The Cubs trimmed their four-run deficit to one in a seventh inning that saw Swanson’s deep fly ball trickle off the glove of Pages in center field, going for a two-out, two-run triple, and Hoerner followed with an RBI single. Bregman, fighting his mechanics for most of the season’s first month, led off the following inning with a home run to tie the score, delivering his biggest moment since joining the Cubs on a five-year, $175 million deal.

An inning after that, the Cubs had their first lead.

By the end of the night, they had their largest comeback win over the Dodgers since 1986.

“The guys battle and continue to fight, don’t give up at-bats,” Bregman said. “I feel like the consistency of preparation for the game, the execution of the game plan over the last two weeks has been really good. I feel like it’s a room full of guys that have been around for a while but also want to continue to improve at the game of baseball and are constantly working to improve their craft.”