Alex Bregman turned in the best night of his career at the plate on Wednesday, hitting three home runs and driving in a career-high seven runs to power the Chicago Cubs past the Washington Nationals 12-6 at Nationals Park. It was the first three-homer game of Bregman's 10-year major league career, and it landed at a moment when both the third baseman and his team needed it most.
Bregman's first shot, a three-run drive off Jake Bird, came in the fifth inning and erased what had been a tight game. He added a two-run homer off Yovanny Cruz in the sixth, then closed the night with a two-run blast off an elevated fastball from Trevor Williams in the eighth. The three swings accounted for all seven of his RBIs and, combined with Dansby Swanson's own home run, buried Washington's pitching staff for good.
A rare feat, and a rarer pairing
Bregman became the 29th player in Cubs franchise history to hit three home runs in a single game, but the details around it made it more than a routine entry in the record book. He is now among a small group of players since 1900 to combine three homers with multiple walks in the same game, having drawn two free passes earlier in the contest. Swanson, his double-play partner, hit his own three-homer, seven-RBI game against San Diego in early July — making Bregman and Swanson the first National League teammates since 1920 to each produce a three-homer, seven-RBI game in the same season, according to figures reported by the MLB.com recap of the game.
The Cubs piled up 13 hits and got a strong start from left-hander David Peterson, who allowed four runs — three earned — while striking out six over five innings before handing the ball to a bullpen that finished the job. Washington got home runs of its own from Abimelec Ortiz and José Tena, and Daylen Lile drove in three runs, but the Nationals could not keep pace with Chicago's power surge. Jackson Kent, making his major league debut for Washington, worked four-plus innings and allowed three runs on three hits and five walks. Announced attendance was 21,116.
A turnaround the Cubs were waiting for
The performance was as much about narrative as numbers. Bregman signed a five-year, $175 million contract with Chicago in January after an injury-shortened 2025 season, and his first year with the Cubs had, for long stretches, fallen short of that price tag. But the swing has come alive lately: over his previous 26 games heading into Wednesday, Bregman was hitting .306 with nine home runs, 26 RBIs and a 1.054 OPS, a stretch the Chicago Sun-Times detailed as evidence of a player rediscovering his timing rather than simply catching fire for a night.
Bregman credited unglamorous preparation for the surge. "The last month or so has been a step in the right direction, but really, the last two days have been a real step in the right direction," he said after the game, adding that he and hitting staff had gone back to old video to find what had gone missing: "We went through the archives for this, like way back in the day. We were watching Corpus Christi Double-A video two nights ago in my room at 1 o'clock."
"It's a credit to how he works every single day and is just relentless with his search to be himself."
— Craig Counsell, Cubs manager
Teammates pointed to the same work ethic. Swanson said of Bregman, "He's best when he's got his hands in everything," while rookie pitcher Ryan Rolison, describing the influence of the team's veterans, said simply, "They lead by action. You can see the way they navigate through the ups and downs."
The win pushed Chicago to within four games of Milwaukee in the NL Central, part of a stretch in which the Cubs have gone 35-16 since June 11 — the best mark in the National League — while already holding position for the top National League wild-card spot. The good feelings were tempered a day later, when Washington's Cade Cavalli struck out 10 and carried a no-hit bid into the seventh inning of a 7-0 shutout that prevented the sweep, a reminder that the Cubs' margin for error in a tightening division race remains thin. Chicago returns home to Wrigley Field looking to carry Bregman's hot stretch, rather than Thursday's shutout loss, into the stretch run.
