As the ball Anthony Rizzo hit rolled to the wall at Miller Park on Sunday easily scoring Jon Jay and Kris Bryant to give the Cubs a 5-0 lead in the series finale, that sound you heard was hundreds of thousands of Cubs fans finally unclenching. Suddenly, this season of fits and starts, of dominant play followed suddenly and without warning by less-than-stellar play, was pointed directly at its rightful target. The playoffs are so close now that not even the Cubbiest of Cubs teams could blow it, and these, as you know, are not those Cubs.
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In truth, the moment the Cubs likely put the race to bed happened four nights earlier when Bryant reminded the world how silly it is that no one even mentions him in MVP discussions anymore. In his young career, Bryant has already made a habit of homering at the exact moment that our fraying nerves need him to. The Cubs’ incredible 5-3 win in the series opener was made possible by a clutch Javier Baez RBI single with two outs and two strikes in the top of the ninth, and a Wade Davis Houdini act in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and one out. Then Bryant crushed a two-run homer in the top of the tenth.
The Brewers, who had been walked-off by the lowly Pirates on Wednesday night, were stunned, and it happened to them again on Friday, this time when All-Star closer Corey Knebel walked Tommy La Stella with the bases loaded in the tenth. If the Brewers had hit on those three near misses, their two rallies on Saturday against Davis would have pulled them to within a half game of the Cubs. Instead, when Jose Quintana polished off his unicorn-like shutout on Sunday, the Brewers found themselves 5 1/2 games out with only six games left to play.
The Cubs and Cardinals both have seven games left including four with each other, which brings about the most tantalizing of all clinch scenarios for Cubs fans. The Cubs are almost certainly going to win the NL Central at Busch Stadium. Sure, Cubs fans have had our petty, but thoroughly enjoyable moments against the Cardinals before. Jim Edmonds recorded the final out on a fly ball to center field as the 2008 Cubs clinched the division against the Cardinals, and we all remember Pat Hughes’, “I wish all of you could be here, right now,” call of the 2015 NLDS win. But both of those happened at Wrigley, which was great. This time, however, the Cardinals and their fans won’t be able to avoid seeing it.
I half expect they’ll bring the Clydesdales and whatever living Hall of Famers they can scrape up for the pregame on Monday night. The Cardinals put all of their insecurities on display opening night, so they can just follow the same script this week.
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Wade Davis has been so dominant this year, especially the last couple of months, that him blowing a lead seemed unthinkable. But he did it twice on Saturday. Orlando Arcia tucked a ball around the left-field foul pole to tie the game in the ninth. In the tenth, Travis Shaw hit a two-run homer to give the Brewers the win.
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ESPN was so confused by the sequence of events that they ran, “Wade Davis blew saves in the 9th and 10th” on their ticker. You can’t blow two saves in one game. We know, because the Cubs had Kevin Gregg two different times, and if he never did it, it can’t be done.
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ABC 7 had a graphic showing that the Cubs, before Saturday, had gone the longest of any team in baseball since losing in a walk-off. The last time was way back on April 7, also in a game at Miller Park. Remember April against the Brewers, when the Cubs couldn’t get Jett Bandy out? The Cubs lost on a Mike Montgomery wild pitch in the 11th.
The only other time the Cubs have lost on a walk-off this season was opening night in St. Louis. After Willson Contreras hit a three-run homer off Seung-hwan Oh in the top of the ninth, Montgomery allowed an RBI single to Randal Grichuk in the bottom half of the inning.
It was almost like Montgomery was trying to impress upon us how incredible it was that he’d finished off that game in November 2016 when he’d been asked to.
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Now that he’s basically everyday Jon Jay, it’s probably time for some appreciation of the Cubs’ erstwhile fourth outfielder. He’s not terribly fast. He has only 23 extra-base hits in 416 at bats. But Brewers manager Craig Counsell said on Sunday that one of the keys to the Cubs going 3-1 in the series was Milwaukee’s inability to keep Jay off base in front of Bryant and Rizzo. Jay had two hits in every game of the series, going 8 for 17 (.471) with two doubles and six runs scored. He also turned in the at-bat of the season on Saturday when he saw 15 pitches from rookie Brandon Woodruff, including ten straight foul balls before singling to right field. Jay would score the tying run on a Ben Zobrist single with two outs in the inning. The 15-pitch at-bat took Woodruff’s pitch count from a manageable 68 through four innings to 83 just one batter into the fifth.
It’s hard to envision a playoff lineup that doesn’t have Jay in it, which would make either Kyle Schwarber, Albert Almora or Jason Heyward the odd man out. Schwarber has had only 44 at-bats in September, but he’s hit five homers and is slashing .273/.333/.636 for the month. Almora should get the start when lefty Gio Gonzalez pitches for the Nationals in the NLDS, but his recent play shows someone who has developed beyond just being a lefty masher. Almora is hitting .349 with an OPS just under 1.000 in 43 September at-bats. And it didn’t all happen in just three at-bats against the Mets. A lot of it did, but not all of it.
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As for Heyward? He’s posted season highs in average and on-base percentage in September at .276/.346, and his slugging is just a tick below what he did in July (.414 to .419). Those aren’t great numbers, but they’re solid, especially when they come with his tremendous defense. It would look as though the easy solution would be to platoon Schwarber and Almora, with Jay playing left when Almora starts and center when Schwarber does, but the return of Addison Russell, means in order to get Ben Zobrist into the lineup, you either sit Baez (which would be lunacy) or play Zobrist in the outfield. Zobrist did not follow up his hot August with anything close in September, but he was clutch in the playoffs the past two seasons for the Royals and Cubs, and won something called the World Series MVP last year. His homer in Sunday’s game in Milwaukee was huge.
Postseason success should play some role in this, too. Schwarber, of course, is a Cubs playoff legend. His career slash line in the postseason is .364/.451/.727/1.178 with a club-record five homers and 10 RBIs.
Zobrist’s overall numbers pale by comparison. But he’s slashed .293/.369/.431/.800 with 17 hits and seven walks in 56 at-bats over three World Series.
Jay’s postseason numbers aren’t good. His career OPS in 12 different playoff series is only .575 and he has just five extra-base hits in 190 postseason at bats. But then again, he has 190 postseason at bats.
As for Almora? Uh … well he pinch ran in Game 7 and scored the go-ahead run in the tenth inning, so there’s that. Otherwise he’s 0 for 10 in nine postseason games.
One guy with no postseason at-bats is Ian Happ. While his September hasn’t been as hot as his August was (.958 OPS with seven homers in 58 at bats), he’s a versatile player who should be doing more than fake dugout home run interviews during the playoffs.
Having too many options isn’t a bad thing, and it’s why the Cubs pay Joe Maddon so much money that he drives an RV! Did you know he drives an RV? He does!
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All in all, this is a much better problem than in 2008 when Lou Piniella said he wasn’t going to start Kosuke Fukudome in Game 2 of the NLDS against the Dodgers, and ended up having to play Fukodome, anyway.
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We make a lot of how Schwarber, at only 24 is the Cubs’ all-time postseason home run leader, mostly because it shows how thin the Cubs’ postseason history is in the live-ball era. But he’s got company. He hit all five of his homers during the 2015 postseason, and last year three other Cubs pulled into a tie with him. Rizzo, Bryant and Dexter Fowler also have five. It’s still pretty amazing that a franchise that has 11 pennants, three World Series championships and 18 playoff appearances has three current players, all of whom are 28 or younger, as their franchise homer leaders.
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What do you say to the Cardinals fan who says, “We don’t celebrate little things like division titles?”
Just remind them that lately, they haven’t been celebrating much of anything.
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To that end, I’m sure you’ll have Cubs fan friends who say something similar. Come on. These are the Cubs. Even with the World Series last year, the fanbase still has decades of pent up celebrations to let loose. Even with the expanded playoffs, it’s still really hard to get there, especially if you’re trying to repeat as World Series champions. When it happens, let loose, have fun, go buy the overpriced T-shirt. There will be a time again, hopefully not for a while, when this stuff stops happening. Don’t be too cool to enjoy every bit of it.
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The week ahead features the four games in St. Louis, where the Cubs will face the Cardinals’ four best starting pitchers. They beat three of them just over a week ago, however. St. Louis will need to have champagne on ice starting Tuesday night, which will just drive them crazy. The regular season ends with three games at Wrigley against the Reds. They serve as the firewall in case things go disastrously bad in St. Louis, but really, they should serve as tune up games for the playoffs.
(Top photo: Jeff Curry/USA TODAY Sports)