Chicago Cubs offense — fueled by Carson Kelly’s career-high 6 RBIs — busts out in 16-2 rout of Toronto Blue Jays

Chicago Cubs major-league coach Jonathan Mota sat at Moisés Ballesteros’ locker Wednesday night and tried to help the youngster process the tough news. The 22-year-old had just been informed that the Cubs were optioning him and recalling outfielder Justin Dean to take his place, difficult news for him to process. “Of course, he was sad, bothered,” Mota told the Tribune. “That’s normal, because no one wants to be sent to the minor leagues.” Mota, a fellow Venezuelan native, sat with Ballesteros and reinforced the message the Cubs had delivered, hoping to lessen the sting for a usually confident player. “It wasn’t because of performance,” Mota said before the Cubs’ 16-2 thrashing of the Toronto Blue Jays in Friday’s series opener at Wrigley Field. “It was because he needs to play, and right now, he’s not playing daily. He’s going to benefit from playing. That was the message, and I gave that to him.” Ballesteros was arguably the surprise story for the Cubs offense to start the year. He was hitting .400 after a 2-for-4 game on April 24 in Los Angeles, the Cubs’ 10th win in a row amid the first of two 10-game winning streaks. Ballesteros old had entrenched himself as the Cubs’ primary designated hitter and was hitting near the top of the lineup. Since that game, though, he was hitting just .139 with a paltry .466 OPS in 114 plate appearances across 36 games. That, coupled with the Cubs’ current situation, meant the team felt better with Ballesteros collecting every-day at-bats and catching with Iowa to try to recapture the form he had to start the season. Matt Shaw is 6-for-19 (.316) since returning from the injured list on June 9 and had a walk in Friday’s blowout. He has been playing right field since Seiya Suzuki moved into the designated hitter role after he tweaked his right knee on June 13 in San Francisco. Suzuki finished 3-for-5 with two RBIs in the win. That left Ballesteros as the odd man out in the Cubs’ roster fixture. “A couple things around that is that one, probably not swinging the bat well enough for us to say, ‘We have to give you DH at-bats,’” manager Craig Counsell said before the win. “And then secondly, I think he caught well enough that we want him to catch more, and that needs to happen in Triple A right now.” The offense Friday showed why the Cubs were fine sending Ballesteros to the minors. They sent 12 batters to the plate in the bottom of the first and scored seven times, highlighted by Carson Kelly’s second career grand slam. They coaxed four walks against Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman, who entered the outing with a 3.41 ERA and 16 walks in 87 innings. “Gausman’s not easy — he’s one of the better guys at avoiding the walk, so we did a good job against him to get the rally moving,” Counsell said after the win. “We made him come in the zone and we laid off the split down and laid off the slider away for the righties, and that’s important.” It was another sign that the Cubs may be digging themselves out of the offensive malaise that had plagued them for about a month. The Cubs have averaged 6.5 runs in their last eight games and are 6-2 in that stretch. They averaged 3.21 runs over their prior 29 games, when they were 7-22, the worst record in baseball in that span. “I look at it like we got to just come back and do it tomorrow,” Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said after his 3-for-3 day with two walks extended his on-base streak to a career-high 22 games. “One day is great, but I don’t know if we needed a reminder that we can do it. I think we need to just start doing it.” And with Ben Brown on the mound, that was plenty of offensive support. The right-hander was again stellar for the Cubs, tossing six innings of two-run ball with four strikeouts. His MLB-high 66.2-inning streak without giving up a home run was snapped by George Springer’s sixth-inning solo shot. Brown has a 1.85 ERA in 68 innings this season, a welcome sign to a pitching staff that has three of its members from the opening-day rotation on the injured list. The other two, Shota Imanaga and Edward Cabera, have combined for a -0.9 WAR, per Baseball Reference. “He’s got really good stuff and that change in mentality of ‘Hit it, I’ve got really good stuff, I’m coming after you,’ and that aggressiveness, you feed off that as a catcher and a position player,” said Kelly, who drove in a career-high six runs. “When he sets a tone like that, everybody else feels it.” The blowout allowed Dean, who Counsell said before the game would be used “mostly as a runner,” to play and give Crow-Armstrong some time off. Dean collected his first major-league hit with a three-run triple in the seventh inning. Dean, a 2018 17th-round pick of the Atlanta Braves, made his MLB debut in 2025 with the Los Angeles Dodgers, spending 52 days in the big leagues and serving primarily as a pinch runner or defensive replacement. He had two at-bats and appeared in 18 regular-season games. He played in 13 games as a defensive replacement in center field in the Dodgers’ World Series run. That made Friday’s first hit extra special for the 29-year-old. “I’m going to watch the video a couple of times and just feel the moment,” Dean said with a smile. “I’m going to just stare (at the first-hit ball) for a while. (Then) send it home, send it to my parents, let them feel the vibe, let them get that, and keep it safe, ’cause I’ll lose it. “Once I saw it land, I’m like, ‘Oh, there it is. That’s the first hit. Then once I kind of settled in, I almost cried. We kept it inside, though. Just super happy.” Andy Martinez is a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune.