Game 137 Recap: Cubs 8 Cardinals 5

Top Play (WPA): Considering that the Cubs are playing the Cardinals, you’d think after banging out a 9-0 win against Lance Lynn yesterday that there might be some sort of letdown with Michael Wacha taking the mound against Jason Hammel. But not so much.

Austin Jackson, who started in center field to get Dexter Fowler a deserved evening off, grounded out to second base to begin the game. Starlin Castro worked a walk, but Wacha induced a lazy flyout from Chris Coghlan for the second out. Then came Anthony Rizzo, who got an 87-mph changeup on the outer portion of the plate from Wacha and knew exactly what to do with it—crush the ball to left-center field for a two-run homer (.202):

It’s a bit of a small sample, but I thought I would look at Rizzo’s stats when seeing changeups.

The interesting thing to me is that he really doesn’t get a ton of them, but when he does they throw them outside, middle-low, and he murders them. In the four-box general area on the left side and moving to the outside portion of the strike zone, Rizzo has now hit 15-for-36 this season with five homers (including the crushed changeup from Wacha). Again, Rizzo doesn’t get a ton of changeups out there, but you’d think it wouldn’t be long before the advanced scouts start saying “don’t ever throw him a changeup on the outer portion of the plate.”

Bottom Play (WPA): This wouldn’t be a Cubs and Cardinals game without something awful and heart-wrenching happening. That something was the entire bottom of the seventh inning. To run it down quickly, Yadier Molina led off the inning with a walk and Mike Matheny pinch-ran Tony Cruz (likely because the game appeared to be over, at 8-0). Randal Grichuk pinch-hit and cranked a two-run homer to left field to make the score 8-2, Mark Reynolds walked, Greg Garcia struck out, Justin Grimm hit Jon Jay, and Tommy Pham singled to load the bases.

That was it for Grimm, as Joe Maddon thought Clayton Richard was a better matchup with Matt Carpenter at the plate. Maddon was spot on, as Richard threw just two pitches to Carpenter, who hit a liner that Javier Baez made an amazing leaping play to grab. Maddon then went with Pedro Strop to get the final out, and that didn’t work out as well. Stephen Piscotty hit a two-run single, Jason Heyward walked, and Cruz brought in another run with an RBI single. With the score 8-5 and the bases still loaded, Strop finally got Grichuk to strikeout to end the threat (-.093). Ultimately, the rest of the game was uneventful and the score ended at 8-5.

Key Moment: The Cubs kept the scoring going in the second inning, with Wacha giving up a one-out double to Baez, a single to Hammel, and another single to Jackson after a flyout by Addison Russell. Castro was up next, and he ambushed a first-pitch fastball from Wacha for a three-run homer and a 6-0 Cubs lead.

The location of this pitch leads me to believe that Wacha thought he could run a fastball in there to get ahead 0-1 in the count, but Starlin had other ideas. I’m guessing that Castro went up knowing that Wacha might try to sneak a heater by him, considering that the vast majority of the pitches Wacha throws are fastballs (on the evening, 54 of his 87 total pitches). This adjustment at the plate is the kind of thing that has led to a lot of recent success for Castro, who has hit 17-for-41 (.414) with two home runs over his last 14 games played.

Trend to Watch: Jason Hammel’s final line won’t look nearly as good as he actually was against the Cardinals. He finished with six innings pitched, four hits, three earned runs, six strikeouts, and four walks, but he started the seventh inning without having allowed any runs. Just to the naked eye, Hammel looked a lot better than he had in many of his starts over the last two months.

For a refresher on the many intricacies of the strange up-and-down performance from Hammel in the second half, check out what Zach Moser wrote about it last week. Beyond all that, I wanted to try to narrow down what might have been different tonight versus, say, one of his poor starts from his recent run of mediocrity. I went straight to Brooks Baseball, and one thing kind of jumped out at me. Here are the details on his pitches from tonight’s game, followed by the pitch details from his July 26th start against the Phillies in which he allowed six runs on eight hits in 3 1/3 innings:

The velocity and pattern of pitching are roughly the same for both games; he threw his slider the most, followed by his fastball and sinker (or two-seam fastball). But one thing stands out, and that is the break on his fastball and sinker. In the case of both horizontal and vertical break on those pitches, he had drastically more movement against the Cardinals and it reflects positively on the balls in play. Batters had a .300 BABIP on his fastball and sinker against the Cardinals last night but a .700 BABIP on those same pitches against the Phillies.

This stuff is extremely important, because Hammel needs his slider and, to a lesser degree, his changeup to be his strikeout pitches. Batters are going to put the ball in play at a high rate against his fastball and sinker, and he needs that extra movement to make sure that he gets more weak ground balls and less line drives. This way, if his slider isn’t as effective on a given day, he can still find a way to get outs.

Coming Next: The Cubs (80-57) have one more in St. Louis against the Cardinals (87-51) before heading to Philadelphia for a four-game set with the Phillies. Jon Lester (3.59 ERA/3.08 FIP/4.11 DRA) will be going for the sweep on the mound for the Cubs against Carlos Martinez (3.04/3.32/4.43), who has struggled in the second half of the season. In his last seven starts, Martinez has a 5.13 ERA in 40 1/3 innings and has allowed 50 hits.

If the Cubs win, that will put them just 5.5 games behind the Cardinals with 24 games remaining on the schedule. The NL Central title won’t be completely out of their reach, considering that they still have three remaining with the Cards at Wrigley Field in a little over a week. But it’s hard not to lament the two-game swing created by that “down-to-his-last-strike” game-winning two-run homer that Jhonny Peralta hit in the ninth inning off Pedro Strop just before the All-Star break. It’s over and they can’t get it back, but if the Cubs creep closer to first place in the coming weeks it will be fresh in my mind.

Lead photo courtesy of Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports