A little bit of larceny for your weekend sport viewing? We all read from the same script. This was a probable Brewers sweep. They had their three best pitchers ready to go in the series and the Cubs had a pitching staff their own manager described as “in disarray” earlier in the week. The bulk pitcher in two of these three games for the Cubs were guys who weren’t in the organization a week ago. One win was admirable. Two was theft. Pure and simple.
The Cubs leave Milwaukee on an 89 win pace. Not too
shabby. A lot of baseball to be played and there is no chance any of us are ever going to feel comfortable. This team is on such a roller coaster. They had that 20-3 run. They immediately followed that with a 7-22 stretch. Then they have followed that with a 12-4 stretch. I know I’m a broken record. You can’t completely dismiss the sequencing. There was some bad baseball played over a long period of time. But also, you can’t completely dismiss the sequencing. While there was a fair bit of luck in there, that 20-3 stretch was impressive and this 12-4 stretch is too. Dr. Jekyll, meet Mr. Hyde. You two ought to get to know one another.
If you are going to rake Jed Hoyer and Craig Counsell over the coals for this season, be sure to give them at least a little credit for the things that go right. Their pitching staff has been completely decimated by injuries and yet, they are in a group of seven teams that has pulled away from the pack record-wise. Of course, a week or two could change that dramatically in either direction. But this team does appear to have righted the ship again. I do think some of what Jed and Craig have done in season has helped keep this team competitive, even if last offseason ended up being a fairly disastrous one for this team.
I think that at the end of the day, the story of this team is that they lost just too much to injury. There are too many guys who are either not going to be back or who are going to be very limited if they are. They are likely to be cobbling together enough innings to survive the remainder of the season. The warmest part of the summer hasn’t even happened yet. But, in a sport where tanking is of relatively little value, who among us is upset that in what will probably be a frustrating season that this team has given us so many last inning craziness? And a competitive team to boot.
By my count, that is now 12 games this season won in their last time up. Nine walk-offs and three last-inning wins on the road. Out of 46 wins, that’s pretty crazy. Add to that nine more wins that the team scored 10 or more runs, and just shy of half the time (three games with nine pushes that past half) they have battered their opponents or ransacked them. This team has stolen a lot of games. Between the injuries and the generally odd shape of games, this now marks nine different Cubs with a save before the All-Star break. It is very hard to imagine them not pushing past 10 of those. Ignoring that at least two of those saves were of the three-inning variety, there is a high chance this team trades for reliever(s) and one or more of those add a save down the stretch.
This is a crazy wild season. But this is also another Cub team that is pretty fun to follow. Without question, hair-pullingly frustrating at times. But mostly fun.
Three Positives:
- The Cubs had four hits in ten innings. Seiya Suzuki’s tenth inning two-run single was the biggest of them all.
- Bryse Wilson threw 4.1 innings of scoreless baseball. Four hits, four strikeouts. That was a fantastic performance.
- Jordan Wicks faced three batters and recorded three outs. It would be fun if this outcome gave him a boost. He didn’t look good in a very untenable situation, but it was exactly enough to get the save.
- Hat tip for Pete Crow-Armstrong. I had just wondered about when teams would start walking him in key situations. No one else hits, you almost have to. I understand the counterpoint about him immediately stealing. And he did. And then he scored. But that was a total lose/lose situation. Why would you think this team would ever hit with runners in scoring position? I think you had to walk him there. But it didn’t work out. We saw that in the early days of the ghost runner in MiLB. There was a lot of bunting and intentional walking. But once the intentional walking starts, it can get really sideways.
Game 84, June 28: Cubs 4, Brewers 3 (46-38)
Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.
THREE HEROES:
- Superhero: Jordan Wicks (.507). IP, 3 BF, BB (Sv 1)
- Hero: Bryse Wilson (.232). 4.1 IP, 17 BF, 4 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 4 K
- Sidekick: Nico Hoerner (.167). 2-4
THREE GOATS:
- Billy Goat: Ethan Roberts (-.408). 0 IP, 3 BF, 2 H, BB, ER
- Goat: Dansby Swanson (-.331). 0-4
- Kid: Alex Bregman (-.124). 0-4, HBP, R
WPA Play of the Game: The game-ending double play induced by Jordan Wicks with the bases loaded, one out and a one run lead. (.535)
Brewers Play of the Game: Garrett Mitchell’s one out walk with the bases loaded to cut the Cub lead to one, right before the game ender. (.240)
Cubs Player of the Game:
Game 83 Winner: David Peterson (61 of 118 votes).
Rizzo Award Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)
The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.
- Michael Busch +18
- Pete Crow-Armstrong +17
- Ben Brown +13.5
- Carson Kelly/Trent Thornton +11.5
- Edward Cabrera -9.5
- Phil Maton -10
- Dansby Swanson -12
- Caleb Thielbar -13
- Seiya Suzuki -17.5
Up Next: The Padres come to Chicago at 43-39, they just left Los Angeles losing two straight to the Dodgers. Despite that, the Padres have won six of 10. They are 20-18 away from home. Shōta Imanaga (5-6, 4.40) starts for the Cubs for the 17th time this year. He is 3-3, 4.75 at home and 3-3, 4.88 at night. So the numbers are fairly consistent. The Cubs are probably going to need some offense (so what else is new?).
Hopefully, they can get that offense against Griffin Canning (1-5, 7.38), who has struggled. They’ve tried him a couple of times after an opener, but that hasn’t worked all that well either. The 2nd round pitch of the Angels (47th overall) in 2017 is having a rough go of it. His career numbers look about like Imanaga’s numbers this year (4.84 in 627 innings for Canning). You know the story though. The Padres have a top 10 bullpen by pretty much any metric and arguably the best closer on the planet. Beat them early. Or at least, don’t let them lead late.
What feels like it was a million years ago, the Cubs took two of three early this year from the Padres. As one of the teams they could end up tied with, you really need to win at least one and hopefully two for future tiebreaker scenarios.
