Quad Cities, the Midwest League affiliate of the American League leading Houston Astros, has gone 9-1 in their last 10 games, and much like their parent club, they currently lead the Western division thanks to their 52-36 overall record.

WHAT HAPPENED: After getting out of the first two innings unscathed, the Cubs gave up three-consecutive singles to allow the first run to score on Chuckie Robinson‘s base hit. From there two more runs scored on a walk and a defensive miscue on a force attempt from Austin Upshaw to Isaac Paredes who was covering second.

After the long third inning, Cubs starting pitcher, Manuel Rondon was replaced by Marc Hubermanto start the fourth. Overall, Rondon threw three innings allowing three runs on seven hits. He is now 9-3 with a 4.84 ERA.

In comparison to their last game, in which they scored 15 runs, the Cubs offense did not show up until the seventh inning when they scored their first run of the game on Paredes’ RBI-double to score Upshaw from second.

In the eighth, South Bend doubled their tally on Vimael Machin’s RBI-single to make it a 5-2 ballgame, but Quad Cities’ lead proved to be too much and the Cubs’ offense got started too late to make anything else happen.

DEFENSE STRUGGLES: The South Bend defense committed three errors (one throwing and two in the field), which became a big hindrance to keeping the game within reach for the Cubs’ offense.

Two of the three errors came back-to-back and directly led to a River Bandits run in the top of the fifth. From there, Quad Cities was able to tack on the two insurance runs and took a commanding 5-0 lead with four frames left to play.

ON A POSITIVE NOTE: If anything positive can be taken away from tonight’s game, it is that Jared Cheek put in a stellar effort in relief. Starting in the top of the sixth, Cheek blanked Quad Cities’ offense over three innings only allowing two hits.

After tonight, he has not allowed a run over his last four appearances, in which he has thrown two and two thirds innings.