Joshua Báez did something Saturday afternoon at Wrigley Field that no one in 150 years of major league baseball had ever done. Called up hours earlier, the St. Louis Cardinals' No. 3 prospect homered in each of his first three big league at-bats — the first player in MLB history to hit three home runs in his debut — and carried the Cardinals to an 8-4 win over the Chicago Cubs. The history is made. The series is not. Sunday's rubber match on ABC carries a season-series tie, a pair of teams pointing in different directions, and genuine wild-card stakes for St. Louis.
A Debut for the Record Books
Báez arrived in Chicago leading all of Triple-A in home runs, the byproduct of a breakout season at Memphis that made his promotion inevitable. What followed was the kind of afternoon fans tell their grandkids about. The 23-year-old slugger went deep in his first at-bat, his second, and his third — becoming the only player in major league history with three homers in a big league debut and the first to homer in each of his first three career plate appearances.
The Cardinals, +170 underdogs on the day, rode the eruption to an 8-4 victory that evened the series and snapped a three-game slide in Chicago. It was a reminder of exactly why St. Louis' front office has refused to rush its most promising position-player prospect — and why the wait, for one afternoon at least, looked very smart indeed.
What It Means for the Wild-Card Race
Báez's fireworks came at a moment when the Cardinals could least afford another quiet day at the plate. St. Louis entered the series 2.5 games back of the third National League wild-card spot with roughly six weeks left in the regular season, after a second half that began with a sputtering offense and a trade-deadline sell-off that left the roster younger and cheaper — but not obviously better.
Then came a rally. The Cardinals won three straight series for the first time all season, taking two of three from the Rockies and two of three from the Phillies behind a dominant Kyle Leahy (9-4) before splitting the first two games of this weekend's rivalry set. Alec Burleson has been the engine of the August surge, batting .311 with five home runs and 15 RBI over 13 games this month. Now Báez gives the lineup a second power threat who was hitting at an entirely different altitude than the rest of the minor leagues.
Sunday's math is simple: a win would give St. Louis its first pair of road series victories at Chicago in the same season since 2022, while keeping the wild-card chase within striking distance. A loss leaves the Cardinals 3.5 back with a two-game trip to Cincinnati waiting on the other side of an off-day.
The Rubber Match: Dobbins vs. Cabrera
Sunday's finale pits Hunter Dobbins (2-3, 3.40 ERA) against Edward Cabrera (5-4, 5.10 ERA), with first pitch at 3:15 p.m. ET on ABC. Dobbins has been quietly excellent since joining the rotation, with 42 strikeouts in 45 innings and a strikeout-to-walk profile that suggests the ERA is no fluke. He gets the start on extra rest, which the Cardinals' bullpen desperately needs after a taxing series.
Cabrera has the bigger arm and the shakier results, living on a knife's edge between dominant stuff and loud contact. The Cubs have been the better team all season — 72-52, 10-4 in August, four games clear of St. Louis in the division — and have won three straight series. They are hunting a fourth, and they are doing it with the kind of depth the Cardinals can only hope their youth movement produces by next September.
The Betting Angle
The market opened with Chicago around -165 and St. Louis at +135, with a total of nine — a number that looks one run low given how both bullpens have been used this weekend. The Cubs are the better team and deserve favorite status. But the Cardinals have the better-rested starter, the hottest bat in the series (Burleson), and a rookie who just proved he can change a game with one swing, three times over.
The sharpest play here is probably St. Louis +1.5 on the run line at plus money, or the over on the total if it drifts back to 8.5. The Cardinals' only real edge, as one analyst put it, is the extra rest — but in a rivalry rubber match with a season series on the line and a rookie riding the adrenaline of a lifetime, edges like that tend to matter more than the standings suggest.
The Bottom Line
History was made on Saturday, and now the Cardinals get to find out whether it means anything beyond the highlight reels. A win Sunday would pull St. Louis within 2.5 games of the final wild-card spot with 40 left to play, with Báez in the lineup and Burleson locked in. A loss, and the feel-good story starts feeling a lot like a footnote in a season that ran out of runway.
Either way, the box score from August 15, 2026 will be looked at for a long time. Joshua Báez hit three home runs in his major league debut. Nobody had ever done that. Now the question is whether the team that gave him his shot can make it count.
Lauren Mitchell
Lauren Mitchell covers sports with a focus on roster movement, coaching trends, player development, and the bigger storylines behind each matchup.