It is prudent by starting out with a big thank you to Al for filling in for me for the last week plus while I vacationed with my family. Midseason vacations are never optimal, but with one of my adult children and her significant other both deriving employment from Penn State University, summer was the only time to bring the whole family together for a trip.
Looking back, the last time I wrote was following the Cubs’ 7-3 win over the Cardinals. Does that feel like a very long time ago? I was out of
the country, did I miss anything? I don’t have a lot of in-season vacation memories, but one of them involves Cole Hamels and a no-hitter. I still sometimes like to mentally pretend that the game happened in an alternate timeline that I’m not a part of.
I’m going to have some things to say about the trade deadline and this 17 straight game stretch that I had circled. Well, I and just about every other even remotely informed Cubs blogger or writer. Sometimes you may pick a certain landmark series or two for looking at a block of games, but this one was easy with them being 17 straight games. Coming into this game with the Royals, the Cubs were 11-4. By any objective measure, this has been a very successful string of games. This hiccup doesn’t make it any less impressive, though obviously after sweeping four games from the Dodgers and Blue Jays, you wanted to get greedy and run a winning streak out to seven. It wasn’t meant to be.
The start of the Clay Holmes era wasn’t a great success. David Peterson had that one terrible start and he’s been terrific as Cub, so let’s go ahead and not draw any conclusions, all right? There are still a ton of injured Cub pitchers rehabbing from various maladies. So the Cubs are no longer married to any one pitcher or group of pitchers. They have depth. Hopefully, Holmes had an off night and the pitching department will find a workable plan moving forward. If not, they can find another way to use him and give someone else a shot in that rotation spot.
Let’s hit a quick perspective check, did you miss me doing this? Four teams have a better record than the Cubs. I’m, of course, disappointed to see that didn’t change, even with a hot stretch of baseball. They are closing in on the Dodgers and Braves now, though that doesn’t have a lot of immediately apparent value. They’ve created a ton of space with the Phillies and Diamondbacks and are pretty comfortably the first Wild Card now. The Cubs appear to be the long shot in a two-horse race. The Cubs are on a better than 93-win pace and now, I feel there is a real chance to exceed that. This team, right now, is better than the one that set this pace. Though I will always concede that they were fortunate to win as many games as they did. All of the walk-offs and the lack of consistently good pitching might have suggested a few more losses.
I’m back, but I’m going to be a little bit brief here tonight. The standings will return in a day or two as I work backwards through the numbers. I will also have a longer form thought about the trade deadline. I was legitimately not tapped in to the BCB reaction, but I did see it on social media and in the national media. I’ll assume that, save for a little trepidation here or there about a prospect that moved, the feedback was wildly positive.
Three Positives:
- I saw that we are trying to vote Ian Happ off the island as a fan base again. Pardon my overall lack of surprise that I return to him having a double and a homer, driving in a run and scoring one. Ian is one of the weirdest players ever. He is remarkably consistent year over year while having long stretches of unproductive offensive play. Never mind that he gets pretty hot between those stretches to maintain that productivity.
- Michael Conforto got into the game, had one at bat and doubled. He’s been such an incredibly effective pinch hitter this year.
- Carson Kelly had a two-run double.
Game 118, August 8: Royals 6, Cubs 3 (68-50)
Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.
THREE HEROES:
- Superhero: Ian Happ (.088). 2-4, HR, 2B, RBI, R
- Hero: Carson Kelly (.070). 1-3, 2B, 2 RBI
- Sidekick: Michael Conforto (.043). 1-1, 2B
THREE GOATS:
- Billy Goat: Clay Holmes (-.211). 4 IP, 18 BF, 6 H, 2 BB, 4 ER, K (L 0-1)
- Goat: Seiya Suzuki (-.149). 0-4
- Kid: Dansby Swanson (-.119). 0-4
WPA Play of the Game: Jac Caglianone’s second homer of the game off Colin Rea, extending the lead back to two. (.147)
Cubs Play of the Game: Carson Kelly’s two-out, two-run double in the fourth inning, cut the lead to two. (.134)
Cubs Player of the Game:
Game 117 Winner: Kevin Gausman received 79 of 98 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.
This spot will return in a day or two.
Up Next: The third and final game of this series, the 17th and final game of this stretch before an off day Monday. Matthew Boyd (7-1, 3.59) starts for the Cubs. Matthew is 5-0 with a 2.66 over his last seven starts, though he did allow four runs to the Dodgers in his last start.
31-year-old righty Randy Dobnak (2-0, 1.16) makes the start for the Royals. He’s made six appearances to date, four of them starts. He’s been in the rotation since the break, recording the two wins and allowing only two runs, both earned, over 21.1 innings as a starter.
Find a win to finish this stretch.
