Game 156 Recap: Cubs 1 Royals 0

It doesn’t feel like the end is here, or even near. The 2015 Cubs have been magic (or, as I still prefer, magick), and it doesn’t feel like this season has any right to end anytime soon. Jarringly, though, Monday marked the end of the regular-season home schedule. If the Cubs don’t win the Wild Card Game next Wednesday, this team—the best, perhaps, that the Cubs have fielded in the last quarter-century—won’t play in front of their home fans again until 2016. This team, who racked up a club record for walk-off wins, might have taken the field below the new scoreboards and the gradually remade bleachers for the last time this year.

If that’s the case, there was no better way (well, almost none) to say goodbye.

Top Play (WPA): Chris Denorfia hit a walk-off home run in a 1-0 win. It’s possible to do that and not have it be the biggest play of the game for your team, but Monday night was not such a tension-fraught game that it came anywhere near happening. Denorfia’s long homer to left, leading off the 11th inning, was worth a little more than a third of a win. It was the 13th walk-off win of the season for the Cubs.

Bottom Play (WPA): On a more typical night for the Cubs, this game might never have reached extra innings. In the bottom of the seventh, a Chris Coghlan walk and a Kris Bryant infield single had Royals starter Yordano Ventura on the ropes with nobody out. On Monday, though, Coghlan and Bryant batted second and third, respectively, and their “reaches” (as Len Kasper has taken to calling them, somewhat dangerously) brought up cleanup hitter Tommy La Stella (?) (!). La Stella bounced into a double play, spoiling the rally and costing the Cubs about 15 percent of a win. Under normal circumstances, batting La Stella fourth in the lineup Joe Maddon fielded would be cause for a raised eyebrow, but given the low stakes and Maddon’s obvious emphasis on resting players and experimenting a bit, it’s just one of those things.

Key Moment: The Royals’ three best hitters were due in the top of the ninth. To get Alex Gordon, Maddon went not to Hector Rondon (not right away), but to Clayton Richard. Richard did the job, and Rondon came on. An infield single by Lorenzo Cain could have created some tension, but Rondon picked Cain off first base with a brilliant move. It was just Rondon’s second pickoff of the year, but he’s developing better skills for slowing opponents’ running game. After that out, a lazy fly ball to left field off the bat of Eric Hosmer ended the inning and left the Cubs set up for a couple of chances to walk off with the win, before the Royals’ thunder would come up again.

Trend to Watch: The big news of the night was Kyle Hendricks. He shut down the Royals for six innings, allowing just two hits and two walks, and fanning nine. Hendricks is up to 720 batters faced and 159 strikeouts this year, which comes out to 22.1 percent of all opponents. Hendricks has gotten a terrible rap in a very good year. He’s a clear playoff starter, and might be the Cubs’ truest third option, if it comes to that. The Royals’ aggressive offense and the tepid conditions helped Hendricks, who got a lot of medium-depth fly balls, but this was a statement start from a pitcher who will give some very confident playoff offense fits if he gets a chance.

Let’s dig a layer deeper on Hendricks. Interestingly, he’s traded in his cutter over the last two months or so, and has found more comfort with his curveball. He’s still mostly reliant on his sinker-changeup combo, but the curve is a better pitch than the cutter was for him. The cutter was actually a fine offering; it just belonged in someone else’s arsenal.

Hendricks has faced 22 or fewer batters in four of his last five starts, including Monday’s. That’s the formula with him. He should be kept on a short leash the third time through the order, if he’s used a third time through at all. He’s done a better job managing that third trip recently, though, by leaning much more heavily on his changeup. If he can do that, and if Maddon will proactively remove him when the matchups allow it, Hendricks could be a real weapon in October.

There were two other things about this game worth watching:

1. Trevor Cahill’s dominance continues. He faced six batters Monday night, and erased the only one who reached on a ground-ball double play. He also struck out three. That makes 19 punchouts in 55 batters faced for Cahill as a Cub. He’s creeping up not only on a roster spot in the Wild Card Game (he’s virtually assured of that, by now), but on a high-leverage role in this patchwork Cubs bullpen.
2. Anthony Rizzo became the first of what figures to be several players with a full (or nearly full) day off over the final week. More on that below.

Coming Next: With the home schedule finished, look for the regular position players to continue to  get some rest. In particular, Dexter Fowler has had zero luck catching up to elevated fastballs lately, and that hole is an easy one for opponents to exploit with his height and his long levers. He needs rest, in order to get his bat back up to speed and ensure that he has his legs under him in center field next Wednesday.

Rizzo always seems to fray at the end of long stretches without time off. His plate discipline loses its sharpness, and his swing also gets a little out of control in the load phase. The result is a lot of pitches mishit, flied into shallow right field or bounced to second base. When Rizzo is right, it’s not his contact rate that sets him apart, but his ability to barrel up his pitch. Given another game or two off, he might restore himself to the lethal offensive force he really hasn’t been since mid-May, and with the playoff schedule so nicely laced with travel days, perhaps he could even sustain that for as long as the Cubs are in the Postseason.

On Tuesday night in Cincinnati, Dan Haren will audition for a playoff roster spot. He probably won’t get one; the fact that he was skipped to set up Arrieta for the Wild Card Game gestures in that direction. He has a case, though, and if he can work around the tough sequence in the middle of the Reds’ order a time or two, he can strengthen it some.

Meanwhile, the Reds will send 28-year-old rookie Josh Smith to the mound. Smith has struck out 19 and walked 17 in 115 batters faced in the majors so far, so even absent one or more of the Cubs’ best hitters, it stands to reason that some runs should go up on the board. Smith throws in the low 90s, and mostly throws his four-seamer and slider.

The Cubs could, in theory, still catch the Pirates for the right to host the Wild Card Game. They shouldn’t expend a lot of energy chasing that, because they’d still need considerable help from Pittsburgh’s opponents, but Smith is the sort of starter the team should knock around, and it would be nice to get them out of the miniature funk they’ve been in at the plate.

Lead photo courtesy of Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports