WASHINGTON — Alex Bregman put together the best offensive game of his career on Wednesday night, blasting three home runs and driving in seven runs as the Chicago Cubs routed the Washington Nationals 12-6 at Nationals Park, according to the Chicago Tribune and MLB.com. The win extended the Cubs' hot stretch to eight victories in their last nine games and pulled Chicago to within three games of the National League Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers.
The outburst capped a whirlwind 48 hours for Bregman, who spent the Cubs' Monday off-day poring over video with assistant director of major-league development Ben Martin. According to the Chicago Tribune, Martin walked Bregman through KinaTrax biomechanical data showing how his body loads at the start of his swing, then pulled up old footage from Bregman's 2016 season at Double-A Corpus Christi to show where his mechanics needed to return. MLB.com reported that the pair identified a specific flaw: Bregman's hips and shoulders were disconnected during his load, with his shoulders closed off while his hips stayed open, limiting his ability to cover pitches across the strike zone.
"We saw some pretty glaring differences, and we searched back to kind of double check it on video and watched that," Bregman said, according to the Tribune. "Then I mean woke up in the morning thinking about it. Got here right into the cage, trying to think about the same things that we talked about."
The adjustments showed up almost immediately. Bregman homered in Tuesday's 8-6 win over the Nationals, then delivered his career night a day later, going deep off a sweeper from Jake Bird for a three-run shot in the fifth inning, ripping a first-pitch slider from Yovanny Cruz for a two-run homer in the sixth, and adding a two-run blast off an elevated fastball from Trevor Williams in the eighth, per MLB.com. He also drew two walks in his first two plate appearances, becoming the first player in Cubs history to reach base twice via walk in a game in which he also hit three home runs, MLB.com noted. The last player anywhere to combine two walks with a three-homer game was the Dodgers' Will Smith on July 5, 2024.
Bregman's three-homer game was the 29th in Cubs history and the 44th instance overall for the franchise, according to MLB.com. More notably, his seven RBIs made him and teammate Dansby Swanson the first pair of teammates in National League history — since RBIs became an official statistic in 1920 — to each record a game with at least three home runs and seven RBIs in the same season. Swanson accomplished the feat on July 1 with eight RBIs. The only other instances of teammates matching that combination in a single season both came from the New York Yankees: Paul O'Neill and Mike Stanley in 1995, and Aaron Judge and Jasson Dominguez in 2025, the Tribune and MLB.com both reported.
Swanson, who also went deep and hit an RBI double Wednesday, credited Bregman's process. "The track record speaks for itself," Swanson said, according to MLB.com. "For him, it's about being able to be convicted and believing in something that he's doing. I feel like he's finally found that."
Cubs manager Craig Counsell framed Bregman's turnaround as the product of grinding through a long season rather than any single fix. "Every year you get reminded, and you kind of have to slap yourself in the face, it's 162 games," Counsell said, per the Tribune. "You can't fake it through 162 games. Players come to play over 162 games, and that's what Alex is doing, and it's a credit to how he works every single day and is just relentless with his search to be himself and to be the best version of himself. He will never give you an inch on that."
The numbers back up Counsell's point. According to MLB.com, dating back to July 27 — when Bregman borrowed Swanson's bat and collected four hits against the Cardinals — he has hit .388 with a .776 slugging percentage, six home runs, eight doubles, 17 RBIs, seven walks and 19 runs scored across 74 plate appearances. His season slugging percentage has climbed to .412 from .351 over that stretch, while his OPS has jumped to .759 from .682.
Beyond Bregman's individual night, the win reflected a broader offensive surge for Chicago. The Cubs, now 71-50 and a season-high 21 games over .500, lead the majors with 17 games this season in which they have scored 10 or more runs, the Tribune reported. They are averaging 7.1 runs per game over their last nine contests, eight of which have been wins. The Cubs also lead MLB with 241 runs scored in two-out situations, and 36 of their 70 runs in August alone have come after two outs, according to the Tribune.
Chicago's lineup also continued its dominance against left-handed pitching Wednesday, working five walks in four-plus innings against Nationals rookie Jackson Kent, a Lake Park High School graduate from Hanover Park making his major-league debut. The Cubs entered the game leading the majors in on-base percentage (.357), slugging percentage (.449) and OPS (.806) against lefties, and ranked second in batting average (.270) and runs scored (185) versus left-handers. Center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, who struck out against Kent in his first two at-bats, came back to hit a game-tying RBI double off the left-hander in the fifth inning. The Cubs added three more runs, one earned, against lefty reliever Tom Cosgrove.
Counsell pointed to Crow-Armstrong and first baseman Michael Busch as key drivers of that success against lefties. "I think Pete and Michael have been very good against left-handed pitching, and I think that's been a big deal," Counsell said, according to the Tribune. "Pete's been incredible, and he's hitting at the top of your lineup, that's a big deal. He's getting the most at-bats, and he's been one of the better hitters in baseball, period."
Left-hander David Peterson started for the Cubs and allowed four runs, three earned, over five innings, enough to keep the Nationals' offense from running away with the game while Chicago's bats caught fire. With the win, the Cubs kept pace in a tightening NL Central race, sitting three games behind Milwaukee with the season entering its final stretch.
