Cubs avoid sweep, but what’s concern level with NL Central gap widening, Shota Imanaga getting quick hook?

SEATTLE — The Cubs can be happy they didn’t get swept out of the Pacific Northwest by a sub-.500 Mariners team after winning with a 19-2 rout Sunday.

But with the final month of the regular season approaching, the Cubs are watching the National League Central-leading Brewers get further away in the standings, all while one of the key pieces to their pitching puzzle is fresh off the shortest outing of his major-league career.

After recently shrinking the Brewers’ lead in the division to three games, the smallest it had been since May, the Cubs entered Sunday behind by seven games, the largest deficit they had faced in weeks. That fell to six with the Brewers’ loss to the Braves.

All the while, the Phillies — with former Cubs slugger Kyle Schwarber hitting dramatic walk-off home runs — and Padres are hot on their heels in a tightening wild-card race.

The sky might be falling for panicky standings-watchers across the North Side. Rest assured, however, that’s not what’s happening in the Cubs’ clubhouse.

‘‘We have to win baseball games,’’ manager Craig Counsell said before the game Sunday. ‘‘Do you know what the other teams around you are doing? Of course, you do. But we have to win games. And when you don’t really control what the other teams do, it’s [about] your team and you winning games. . . .

‘‘I’m not sure what me looking and worrying about that stuff will do for the Cubs. You see the score, you say, ‘Oh, they won. OK, great.’ ’’

The Cubs’ shot at the Brewers will come soon enough, with seven games still to play against them.

‘‘Seasons always come down to the last week,’’ Counsell said. ‘‘The thing I always think about, the standings go up and down. And, obviously, you’d love to make it as easy as you can on yourself. But then you’re always in the last 10 days of the season. That’s how it happens. That’s how it works.’’

But other questions are popping up, such as whom the Cubs will be able to count on in those critical games against the Brewers.

They opted to keep left-hander Shota Imanaga from starting against the Brewers in the last game they played in 2025, the decisive fifth game of the NL Division Series. He had limped into the playoffs with a 6.51 ERA and 10 home runs allowed in five September starts and had given up six runs and three homers in two postseason outings.

Imanaga has endured a bit of a bumpy stretch lately, and few of his games as a big-leaguer have been bumpier than the one Sunday. He got only six outs in the shortest outing of his career.

Imanaga allowed only a couple runs but put plenty of runners on base, surrendering five hits, walking two and hitting a batter as the pitches piled up in a hurry. One of the hits was a leadoff homer by Randy Arozarena, the 30th long ball Imanaga has given up this season, one shy of the major-league lead.

‘‘He was having a bad day,’’ Counsell said after the game. ‘‘Frankly, keeping it to two [runs] through two innings was pretty good. . . . He was struggling today, and you could tell. The misses were far bigger than normal. Velocity was down a little bit from the beginning.’’

Though Counsell and the Cubs continue to rave about Imanaga’s work in general, he has a 6.39 ERA with five homers allowed in his last three starts.

Time to panic? Not yet. There’s a lot of opportunity for Imanaga to straighten things out before the most important games of the season. But his recent struggles can’t help but bring to mind how things ended last season.

‘‘As a starter, you want to keep the team in the game; today, I couldn’t,’’ Imanaga said through an interpreter. ‘‘Next start . . . [I need to] keep us in the game, stay tenacious and help the team.’’