Top Play (WPA): Jake Arrieta doesn’t exactly lose his cool with the bases loaded. In fact, coming into play tonight, he’d retired the last 13 batters he’d faced with the bases juiced. And after tonight’s action, you can make it 14. In the top of the seventh inning, with the score still tied at zero and his pitch count already over 100, Arrieta inexplicably walked three batters in a row with two outs, loading the bases for Justin Turner. Chris Bosio got on the phone, and Arrieta got into gear. First pitch, fastball. Strike. Second pitch, foul ball. Strike. Third pitch? Right on the outside corner. Fastball. Strike. Turner out (+0.120), Cubs back up. Just how it goes when you’re Jake Arrieta.
Bottom Play (WPA): It was a close game, right until the end, when Corey Seager hit a three-run homer off Trevor Cahill in the ninth, put the Dodgers up 5-0, and quelled most of Wrigley’s remaining hope about a comeback. Before that, though, Adrian Gonzalez—a former top prospect, though he’s never referred to that way anymore, sadly, and an interesting man—singled to left field, scoring Chase Utley (-0.168) and advancing Seager to second base. He’d score later in the frame, on a Howie Kendricks sacrifice fly, and the Dodgers never trailed from that point forward. Just the way it goes, sometimes, even for .700 teams. They’ll bounce back tomorrow.
Key Moment: That Seager home run. I wish I could be more sophisticated about this—break the game down, minute by minute, to find the moment where the straw broke the back in a final sort of way, but this was it. Before the blast, the Cubs were down 2-0 heading into the ninth. That’s easy. After, they were a grand slam and a solo shot away from tying. That’s a big difference, and it’s all on the back of one of the purest swings in the game today. If you want to dive a little deeper, though, you can look at Joe Maddon’s decision to run Clayton Richard out there for the eighth. Richard hasn’t been good in a while, unfortunately, and so it was a little surprising to see him out there in a 0-0 game, against a good team (or, at least, a team with pretensions of being good) like the Dodgers. Still, I suppose you have to play your players somewhere—it’s right there in the name, after all—and it just didn’t work out for Maddon, Richard, and the Cubs tonight.
Trend to Watch: If you’re not watching Jorge Soler start to hit, and hit well—which, hey, you should be, because that’s exactly what he’s doing, and it’s gonna be hella fun—then perhaps the trend to watch here is Arrieta. After a few starts in which he, and the Cubs team whose rotation he leads, looked almost mortal, he was largely back to his old dominant ways tonight. The fastball was crisp, the slider was solid, and the command (with one notable exception, about which we’ve already spoken) was back in order. Arrieta scattered two hits over seven largely dominant innings, walking four batters—three in the eighth; that’s the exception again—striking out eight, and lowering his MLB-leading ERA to 1.56. That last mark, incidentally, is currently identical to that of a Dodgers’ Tuesday benchwarmer. Some guy named Kershaw. Anyway, point is, Arrieta appears to be back on track. That’s nothing but good news for a Cubs team that enters June as the force in the National League.
Coming Next: Mike Bolsinger—whose name conjures, for me, images of number two pencils, standardized testing, and linoleum—faces Jon Lester in the series’ third game, in which the Cubs will try to clinch at least a split. It’s another 7:05 CT start, and can be seen in the Chicago area on CSN, in the rest of the country on ESPN, and in the rest of the world on MLB.tv. Radio is, as always, 670 The Score.
Lead photo courtesy Matt Marton—USA Today Sports.