Top Play (WPA): What a difference a day makes! After a miserable, soaking wet shutout loss to the Cardinals on Monday, the Cubs feasted on young left-hander Tyler Lyons and the rest of St. Louis’ pitching, drawing eight walks, smacking 12 hits, and generally knocking Lyons and later Randy Choate around the yard.
The Cubs have done well to put runners on base this season, but have struggled bringing them around to score due to high strikeout rates and a surprising lack of slugging—problems especially dreadful when facing the Cardinals, with fans’ “anything that can go wrong, will” attitude. Chris Denorfia massaged some of those fears away in the third inning, lining a single just over the glove of Kolten Wong and driving in Anthony Rizzo and Jorge Soler to put the Cubs up 2-0 (.209). While that 2-0 lead wouldn’t hold, it took some pressure off of All-Star snub Jake Arrieta, who pitched another gem.
Denorfia played solidly while gettings some starts while Soler was on the DL, but his ideal role is that of a fourth outfielder who gets the occasional start against a lefty. He did just that on Tuesday, starting in both ends of the doubleheader against the Cardinals’ two young southpaws. The bench, which had performed woefully in Soler’s absence, is already much better constructed.
Bottom Play (WPA): Coincidentally, the afternoon’s bottom play immediately preceded Denorfia’s two-run single. With runners on second and third and one out, Soler ripped an 89 mph Lyons sinker down the third-base line, but the defensively improved Mark Reynolds snared the two-hopper and fired home to get Dexter Fowler, who was running on contact (-.108). Soler would take second on a wild pitch, setting up Denorfia’s go-ahead single (.019).
Our fearless leader, Sahadev Sharma, wrote very recently of the Cubs’ “quartet of carnage”: a profile of the deep slumbers each of Miguel Montero, Dexter Fowler, Addison Russell, and Starlin Castro’s bats have fallen into either recently or for the entire season. There’s hope in that piece, and in general, but I think the return of Soler’s thumping ability might prove to be a bigger factor in the resurgence of the offense. Both ends of the doubleheader featured some hard contact off of his bat.
Key Moment: The Cardinals decided that they would attack Jake Arrieta early in the count, leading color analyst Jim Deshaies to speculate that Arrieta would throw some first pitch breaking balls to keep them off balance, but Arrieta stuck with the hard stuff and kept his pitch count low into the seventh. That inning, he found himself in trouble after a leadoff walk to Jhonny Peralta and two quick fly outs. Peralta ran on a 3-2, two-out pitch to Peter Bourjos, which allowed him to score on Bourjos’ double to left (.072).
After an Xavier Scruggs single to right that plated Bourjos and brought the score within one (.101), Joe Maddon dipped into the bullpen. James Russell promptly struck out Matt Carpenter looking on four pitches to end the threat (-.083).
Trend to Watch: I’ve hinted at it, but now it’s time to look at Soler. He went hitless in this game and recorded only one base knock on the day in nine trips to the plate, but one couldn’t help but see the ball jump off his bat like it had just been told John Lackey was lurking behind it.
Soler’s eyes get big when he sees a heater. Brooks Baseball indicates that the slugger hits .376 against four-seamers with a .677 SLG and .301 ISO; likewise, he’s .375 with a .531 SLG and .156 ISO on sinkers. When Soler sees the hard stuff, he sends it back harder.
Against sliders and curveballs, however, Soler doesn’t have a career home run, he hits .129 and .182 respectively, and he generally can’t tap into his prodigious power. Pitchers love to attack Soler with breaking stuff when they’re ahead in the count: in 2014, righties threw 47 percent breaking balls while ahead, and this season it’s 40 percent. While Soler only has about half of a season’s worth of major-league at-bats under his belt, it’s safe to say that growing as a hitter entails taking a different approach to breaking pitches. Luckily, he hits fastballs well enough to immediately make the lineup “thicker,” in the inimitable words of Joe Maddon.
Coming Next: The second game of the doubleheader!
Lead photo courtesy of Caylor Arnold-USA TODAY Sports