Top Play (WPA): This was a scoreless game until the sixth inning. Two eminently Stoppable Forces—the Cubs and Mets offenses, of recent vintage (see my colleague Matt Trueblood’s recent piece for more details)—had in fact traded zeroes for five consecutive frames before Matt Szczur lined a double to left-center in the top of the sixth, scoring Kris Bryant, who had reached on his first of two walks on the night. That knock not only broke a Cubs o-for-20 streak with runners in scoring position, it also improved Chicago’s chances of winning the game by a solid 19.6 percent, as that one run turned out to be all the scoring in the game. A laugher, it was surely not, but the Cubs’ bullpen deserves a lot of credit for holding the lead and breaking a season-high five-game losing streak. On a personal level, the hit probably meant quite a bit to Szczur himself, who’s been shuttled back and forth between Iowa and Chicago near-constantly this season. In that spirit, take a gander at his big hit:
Bottom Play (WPA): In a game like this, it isn’t the One Big Hit that dooms the losing team, it’s the steady accumulation of a lot of plays that do marginal damage to their chances of winning. In that spirit, the Mets had ten of the bottom fifteen plays of the game, by WPA, although none of those plays hurt their chances by more than 7.5 percent, and the ‘worst’ play of the game was by a Cubs’ hitter. That play, in particular, came in the third inning of the game, by one Chris Denorfia. After singles by Dexter Fowler and Bryant, and a walk to Starlin Castro, Denorfia came to the plate with the score tied at zero and the bases loaded with two outs. Unfortunately, he thereafter got somewhat under the pitch from Mets’ starter Jon Niese, and flied out to center field. C’est la vie. It happens to the best of us, and Denorfia has been pretty good, despite cooling off from his scorching start to the season (.429/.455/.476 through May 4th). Since returning from the disabled list on June 7th, Denorfia has put up a perfectly solid but somewhat more human .298/.339/.421 triple-slash line, which the Cubs will certainly take for the rest of the season.
Key Moment: By Leverage Index (LI), a statistic which attempts to quantify the importance of each moment in a baseball game, the most important moment of yesterday’s game was, indeed, Denorfia’s plate appearance in the third inning with the bases loaded. But we’ve already talked about that, and I want to write about the Cubs’ bullpen, so I’ll use this space to note that the second most-important moment of the game, by LI, was Jason Motte’s strikeout of Ruben Tejada to lead off the ninth inning. Indeed, the top five plays that occured with a Cubs’ pitcher on the mound all involved a reliever: a sequence of Hector Rondon, in the seventh, Pedro Strop, in the eighth, and Motte in the ninth. That trio was collectively excellent, retiring all nine batters they faced, and their performance has contributed mightily to the success of a Cubs’ pen that has the second-best ERA in baseball since June 1st (1.63). Anyone want to guess which team has the best ERA since June 1st? Anyone? No? It’s the Cardinals, at 1.52. Yeah, I didn’t want to tell you either.
Here, this’ll make you feel better:
Trends to Watch: Offense. Offense is the trend to watch. It wasn’t at all good last night. A win is a win, and you take them any way they come, but it’s not like this game did a whole lot to dispel concerns over the Cubs’ anemic performance in recent days. Just one Cubs’ starter, Szczur, had more than one hit, and his knock remains the only Chicago base-hit with runners in scoring position in over a week. Before yesterday’s game began, manager Joe Maddon brought a magician illusionist into the Citi Field visiting clubhouse to entertain the team and, one imagines, take their minds off of their season-high slump. Correllation is (repeat after me) not causation, but this sort of thing is exactly what Maddon is known for doing, and seemed to be a hit with the team. It’ll have to translate into runs on the board soon, however, to go down as another ‘Burmese Python in the Clubhouse’ moment, as the Cubs enter the month of July 10.5 games behind the Cardinals for the division lead and a half-game back of San Francisco for the second Wild Card spot.
Coming Next: The Cubs finished June with an essentially .500 record (14-13) for the second consecutive month (14-14 in May), and look to start July strong as Jon Lester takes the mound for the team tonight against the Ageless Wonder, Bartolo Colon. Colon has been a little below average this season, putting up a 4.75 DRA and 114 cFIP in his age-42 season, and the Cubs’ bats will look to jump all over his mistakes. The series concludes on Friday afternoon with a dandy of a pitching matchup—Jake Arrieta (3.15, 75) versus Jacob DeGrom (2.24, 54)—before the Cubs head back to Wrigley to take on the Giancarlo Stanton-less Marlins. The Cubs haven’t had success against Miami so far this year, losing their previous series two games to one, but that’ll have to change going forward. Looking past Miami, the road to the All-Star break includes a four-game set against the Cardinals at Wrigley. Think that’ll be a big series? Sure would be nice to go into the final series before the break (a three-game set with the White Sox) not in a double-digit divisional hole, despite the Cubs’ pretty strong position with respect to the Wild Card.
Off the field, incidentally, this figures to be a big week for the team as well. The July 2nd international free agent signing period starts tomorrow (!) and the Cubs are expected to be one of the more active teams once again. Meanwhile, the trade deadline looms on the horizon, and Scott Lindholm wonders about who the Cubs might target for the outfield. Stay tuned. Things are moving fast in Chicago these days.
Lead photo courtesy of Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports