2024 Cubs Heroes and Goats: Game 144

Photo by Harry How/Getty ImagesWho doesn’t love a little pleasant surprise on a Monday? To say the Cubs had a tough matchup Monday night feels like a wild understatement. They were facing arguably the best team in baseball, were starting an aging starter behind whom they’ve had an abysmal record, and their offense had completely vanished in the previous three-game series. This felt like an impossible mission.

But baseball always has surprises for us. This is some of the joy of following baseball. Even as someone who has followed baseball for 40 years now and blogged about it for years, you can get caught off guard. Most of what I do here is reading the tea leaves and trying to anticipate…