Ho hum. This was how this stretch was supposed to go. Three days in a row, the Cubs have looked a full step above their competition. In fairness, that can be hard to do on the road, even against bad teams. But for as many times as I’ve written the words “in fairness” through the years, there have been just too many this year. I try to give a lot of benefit of the doubt. Baseball is hard. Hard for teams, hard for players. The edges aren’t massive. Even a year when a team wins or loses more than 110
games, a rare occurrence in either direction, the differences between top and bottom are ultimately not that much.
Fans tend to be unfair. The see a lousy team on the schedule or a pitcher with a high ERA and they just assume victory by a lopsided score is more or less automatic. There are 162 games. Even those rare super dominant (or super awful) teams occur, they still win 50-60 games. Most of the bad teams still win 70 games. That’s a whole lot of David beating Goliath. That’s because in the MLB, it isn’t really David beating Goliath. We tell those stories because so many people love a good underdog success story. But the reason so many games are won by bad teams or lost by good teams, is because the margins just aren’t that big.
Trust me, if you elevated a Triple-A team to the big leagues, they wouldn’t be winning 70 games. Unless it’s a well stocked system, they probably wouldn’t win 60 either. Elevate a Double-A team, and they’d win even less. You keep going down and have a low minor league team playing against major league teams, you’d see the big league teams, even the bad ones, winning over 90 percent of the time. It isn’t the nature of baseball that just any two teams of any skill level will play to close to even. It is the nature of major league baseball that just about any two teams would play to near even.
All of that is fine. But this Cub team is built to win 90 plus games. This team should be able to grind out wins over time. And they should be able to look a cut above for three straight games. But they also should have been able to do a good bit more than that over the seven games prior to that. And they should have been able to go toe to toe and play near even for the three weeks before that. The best Cub team of any of our lifetime went through an extended lull. It happens. I get it. But more than a month is crazy stuff.
I just don’t know what to do or what to think with this team anymore. They had one of the best stretches of baseball I’ve ever seen and one of the teams they beat up on in that stretch is looking like a bonafide contender in the National League. That stretch largely wasn’t against the worst teams in the league. But then this recent bad stretch did include some of the worst teams. We saw some of that last year too. Surging even against strong competition and fading even against lesser competition.
Yesterday, one commenter wondered if the elimination of most of the big league scouting has a part in all of that. I’m not savvy enough to know that. The Cubs certainly aren’t going to tell us that. Even their beat writers rely too much on access to the team and its players to spill any secrets they might hear around the team. I don’t know what the deal is, but this has been a frustrating team to follow.
It’s going to take more than three wins to lure me back onto the bandwagon. But that doesn’t preclude me hat tipping the team for taking care of business now for three straight games and making it look fairly easy doing so. More of that please. Let’s go 10 straight again. Or something like 15 of 20. Let’s make this team even more confusing to understand.
Or let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Yet. Let’s enjoy this win and move on to Sunday. This team has done an exceptional amount of sweeping this season. Let’s get greedy again and pick up another sweep on Sunday. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Positives:
- Pete Crow-Armstrong stayed blisteringly hot, picking up three more hits. Included were a homer on the first pitch of the game and a double. Have I mentioned that he’s going to pick up a cycle one of these days?
- Pedro Ramirez had a pair of hits including his first career homer. That led to me expanding my positives past three, because this game deserves a hat tip.
- Ben Brown was less dominant than he’s been as a starter. And still, he allows one run over five. He allowed seven hits, due to an unsightly .412 BABIP. That’s an unusually rough occurrence with a defense as good as the Cubs have.
- Caleb Thielbar retired all five batters he faced. He’s had some recent struggles and so this was nice to see. Hat tip to Phil Maton, another guy working through a rough year, retiring four of the five batters he faced.
- Matt Shaw got his most significant playing time since returning from the IL (let’s hope Seiya Suzuki is okay) and had a single and a walk. His bat helps balance the left/right splits on this team and his versatility is a plus.
Game 71, June 13: Cubs 6, Giants 1 (37-34)
Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.
THREE HEROES:
- Superhero: Michael Busch (. 231). 1-3, 2B, 2 BB, RBI, R, SB
- Hero: Pete Crow-Armstrong (.176). 3-5, HR, 2B, RBI, 2 R
- Sidekick: Ben Brown (.139). 5 IP, 23 BF, 7 H, 3 BB, 1 ER, 3 K (3-2)
THREE GOATS:
- Billy Goat: Ian Happ (-.079). 1-5, HR, RBI, R, SB, DP
- Goat: Nico Hoerner (.053). 0-5
- Kid: Miguel Amaya (.045). 1-4, 2B, HBP
WPA Play of the Game: Luis Arraez had an RBI triple with one out in the third to cut the Cub lead to two. (.140)
Cubs Play of the Game: Pete Crow-Armstrong’s leadoff homer on the first pitch of the game. (.101)
Cubs Player of the Game:
Game 70 Winner: Javier Assad received 170 of 189 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 +26
- Ben Brown +12.5
- Pete Crow-Armstrong +12
- Michael Conforto +10
- Trent Thornton/Carson Kelly +7.5
- Caleb Thielbar/Phil Maton/Jameson Taillon -8
- Matt Shaw -10
- Dansby Swanson -12
- Seiya Suzuki -23.5
Win Pace: 84.4
Up Next: The final game of the series in San Francisco and the last game of the year between the two teams. The Cubs have won three of five. Ryan Rolison (5-1, 2.25) will work as the opener ahead of Colin Rea (5-4, 5.19). Rolison worked as an opener just over a year ago against the Mets as a member of the Rockies. He allowed one hit in an inning of work. Rea threw six innings of three run ball in a follower role earlier this year against the Phillies. Rea is just 1-3 with a 5.89 ERA over his last seven, so this is worth a shot to shake things up a little.
The Giants start their ace, 29-year-old Logan Webb (3-4, 3.88). Webb has struggled at home this year (0-3, 4.94). But he’s still very good. This is going to be a tough one. I’d think Michael Conforto would get a start in right field to give Seiya Suzuki a day off after leaving early last night. Webb is a little more susceptible to left handed hitters, so it would make sense anyway to load up that way.
This team has found so many ways to surprise us. Maybe they surprise us in this one and ride their recent momentum to a win?
