Photo courtesy of Caylor Arnold-USA TODAY Sports
Top Play (WPA): Oddly enough, the biggest play came on just the ninth pitch of the game. Following a lead-off walk from Dexter Fowler, Kris Bryant fouled off a 2-0 four-seamer that was low in the zone, then hammered the next offering from Jacob deGrom to the back of the newly filled bleachers in left-center field, quickly giving the Cubs a two-run lead (.168). A lot has been made of Bryant seeing few strikes, but he’s been hacking at the one’s he has seen and barely missing them. However, on Saturday he jumped on a first-pitch slider from Kyle Lohse to get his first home run.
Then after missing the first pitch he saw in the zone on Monday, he pounced on the next pitch.
Bryant is going to strike out his fair share, but if he can continue to take his walks and start to drive the few strikes he sees—he was 1-for-2 with two walks and the homer on Monday evening—the hype will be more than justified.
Bottom Play (WPA): Zac Rosscup came in to face Lucas Duda with no outs and a man on first in the eighth inning and the Cubs clinging to a 4-3 lead. Duda had a .632 OPS against lefties entering the night for his career, but had been off to a hot start early this year against southpaws (.955 OPS in 32 plate appearances entering Monday). But Rosscup’s dominance against same-handed batters (.503 OPS-against for his career, .243 in 17 plate appearances this season) along with the fact that Justin Grimm had just given up a single, tossed 26 pitches on the day, pitched the day prior, and had just returned from injury, justified Maddon bringing in the lefty. Duda pulled a rocket down the line that Anthony Rizzo snagged then calmly walked to first to double up Michael Cuddyer (-.177), who had no chance of getting back to the base.
The second-worst play was another double play, one that ended the game, when Johnny Monell hit a hard grounder to Addison Russell, who momentarily bobbled the ball, but gathered himself in time to shovel it to Starlin Castro, who quickly made the turn to preserve the Cubs one-run victory (-.158).
After the game, Maddon said one could focus on Russell’s bobble if they wish, but he pointed out that the ball had significant spin on it and youngster’s ability to stay with that play and still manage to get two outs was impressive. Russell did show his inexperience at second when the Mets had two on and one out in the fourth and Wilmer Flores hit a grounder up the middle. Russell fielded the ball cleanly and Castro went to cover second, expecting a flip from his second baseman to start what appeared would be an easy double play. Instead, Russell hesitated, unsure if he should take the ball to the bag himself or toss it to Castro. Russell ended up getting an unassisted force at second, but the Mets stayed alive in the inning and managed to scratch across a run when Kevin Plawecki knocked a single in the next at-bat.
It didn’t end up costing the Cubs in the long run, but it’s a play that Castro admitted to me after the game would be something he’d help Russell with in the future. It’s the type of play that’s hard to recreate while fielding grounders before the game and one that Russell can only learn from experience.
Key Moment: The Duda line-out double play was easily the biggest moment of the game, but the defense in general was big for the Cubs. Preceding the game-ending double play, Castro made an impossible diving play on a Dilson Herrera liner that seemed destined to put runners at the corners with nobody out. Instead, it was a harmless lineout and a prelude to a hard-fought Cubs win.
And while Castro’s gem will get plenty of attention, and deservedly so, as the talented shortstop has been playing strong defense all season, it was another defensive snag earlier in the game that also deserves some props. And this one came from a rather unexpected source. With two down and the relatively speedy Juan Lagares on first, John Mayberry Jr. lined what appeared to be gapper towards left-center. Chris Coghlan, who is certainly not known for his defensive prowess, took a solid route and snagged what likely would have been a run-scoring double for Mayberry. A team not known for its defense made the plays on Monday night and came away with a big win largely thanks to those gloves to start this series.
Trend to Watch: You could wonder if the strong defense is going to continue, or perhaps if Grimm’s presence will solidify the rocky bullpen, but it’d be hard to feel comfortable that either of those things are going to happen, at least in the near future. What does look like it may finally come to fruition is the power-happy offense many expected from the North Siders.
Bryant went deep and Rizzo immediately after. Rizzo’s power has been around for much of the year, it was his seventh shot of the season and his .593 slugging percentage is nothing to sneeze at. But the recent emergence of Bryant slugging—his ISO was .083 prior to Saturday’s game and jumped to .145 by the time Monday’s contest ended—is just another sign that this team can start to mask their strikeout issues with some power.
“I mean, no one’s talking about Houston’s strike-out problems right now and they’re hitting a ton of homers,” general manager Jed Hoyer said prior to the game. “We’re gonna hit homers. I think that we’ve played a lot of cold-weather games early and we hit some balls that probably would’ve been homers. It’s gonna come, we have too many guys that have power. And then yes, you feel a little differently about high strikeouts if it comes with high slugging.”
The Cubs .389 slugging entering the night was ninth in the league while their 26.3 percent strikeout rate was far and away tops in the NL. But as Hoyer pointed out, they were taking their fair share of walks (8.7 percent, third in NL), seeing a lot of pitches (3.99 pitchers per plate appearance led the NL), and were getting on base at a respectable clip (.321, sixth in NL) for the first time under this regime. Nobody doubts the power will come; if it can do so at the expense of strikeouts rather than their on-base prowess, this team should be scoring runs in bunches.
Hoyer added that the main reason for the high strikeouts was due to Bryant, Russell, and Jorge Soler. While some of that was to be expected, he did believe that as those youngsters continue to acclimate themselves to big-league pitching, those high strikeout totals would come down to earth a bit.
Coming Next: Rookie Noah Syndergaard makes his big-league debut against Cubs ace Jake Arrieta. The key for the Cubs will be to continue to use their patient approach and see if they can quickly elevate Syndergaard’s pitch count like they did to deGrom on Monday. While every win a team can notch is important, Tuesday seems especially so in this series with Matt Harvey looming on Wednesday and the struggling Travis Wood going for the Cubs in the series finale Thursday. The Cubs would also like to see Arrieta return to his dominant form after a pair of four-run outings in his last two starts, as he failed to get out of the sixth in either game.