Are you ready for the final 100 games of the 2016 baseball season? You know what they always say: it’s really the last 100 games where you find out what kind of team you have.*
Top Play (WPA): Albert Almora, Jr. Almora. Albert. The Cubs had just lost their game-long lead, entering the ninth inning, and courtesy of the Nationals’ third sacrifice fly of the night, when Almora came through with a ringing double to left (+0.299), scoring Addison Russell and putting the Cubs up 4-3 in the inning. It was just a huge knock for the kid, who was visibly fired up as he stood on the base at second and stared in, head tossing, at his jubilant home dugout. Later in the inning, he smartly tagged up to third on a fly ball that nearly cost Bryce Harper his testicles. He—Almora—is hardly a week into his big-league career, but he already fits this team—and its attitude—like a glove. That’s a testament to the kid himself, who so impressed the Cubs’ brass during the run-up to the 2012 draft that the word was that Theo Epstein wanted to adopt him, set aside draft him, but it’s also a testament to a Cubs’ player development program that has learned how to prepare its graduates for life in Joe Maddon’s clubhouse on day one.
Bottom Play (WPA): WPA is booooooring here. The bottom play came in the seventh inning, when the Nationals briefly threatened: John Lackey hit Danny Espinosa with a pitch to lead off the inning, and then Jose Lobaton doubled (-0.195) to put runners on second and third with none out. That led to the key moment, described below.
Key Moment: Joe Maddon has been unusually unwilling, this season, to go away from his starting pitchers late in games. Perhaps it’s that they’ve all been throwing so extraordinarily well—and that, of course, matters—but perhaps it’s also that he’s prepping them for postseason starts in which they might be asked to go longer than is usual. In any event, it was unusual to see Maddon come and get Lackey with two men on and nobody out in the seventh inning. Sure, it’s a perfectly normal time, generally speaking, to come get your starter, but it hasn’t been the default, really, for Maddon this year. Lackey seemed all right with the decision—or, at least, as all right as 37-year-old cagefighters ever are—and the decision to bring in Pedro Strop worked out well, as #HatsToTheLeft got out of the jam with no real damage, save a sacrifice fly surrendered to Ben Revere. The bottom of the eighth inning was key, too, as of course was the ninth—what with Hector Rondon coming in and allowing what was then the tying run—but the seventh was the inning where Maddon set the tone for the rest of the ballgame.
Trend to Watch: Miguel Montero has been looking a bit funny over the last few weeks—really, ever since returning from his injury. And so it was that David Ross got the start behind the plate tonight, despite this being a spot you might half-expect to see Montero get in. Sure, Gio Gonzalez is a tough lefty, and Montero hasn’t started against a lot of those this year or last, but he’s so much the better hitter than Ross—at least in principle, if not over the last few weeks—that it’s somewhat dispiriting to see that he didn’t get the nod here. The very fact that Maddon is protecting him against tough matchups speaks to a general tentativeness to Montero’s game right now, and one that’s very much at odds with the veteran’s dogged determination and clubhouse presence. That’s not to say, at all, that this is a makeup thing: I’m just pretty sure Montero has some nagging injury that’s causing him problems to this day. That’s unfortunate, and it’s tonight’s trend to watch.
Also worth noting, though: Jason Heyward is getting good at hitting. Wait, strike that—Jason Heyward was always good at hitting; these days, he’s hitting well. He showed it in the third inning of today’s game, when he lined a clean single to right on the second pitch he saw from Nationals’ starter Gonzalez, scoring John Lackey (!) and Dexter Fowler, and giving the Cubs an early lead. It’s hard to overstate how important Heyward’s increasingly potent bat is to the Cubs: he is a huge potential bat in the lineup who’s been essentially silent for the first two and a half months of the season. The Cubs are, nonetheless, the best team in the major leagues. What could they be with a resurgent Heyward? I suppose we’ll find out soon …
Coming Next: The Cubs conclude the series in DC tomorrow as Jason Hammel—he of the possibly-injured, possibly-fine-and-dandy hamstring—will take on Stephen Strasburg in a 3:05 pm getaway game. Strasburg has been exceptionally good so far this season, and not just on the mound: his face looks immeasurably better without that awful beard he wore during his first few seasons in the league. He’s pitching better too: as Matt Trueblood noted in the series preview, his 32 percent strikeout rate on the year so far is essentially the highest mark of his career. Hammel hasn’t pitched poorly, either, so this could be a dandy. The game will be broadcast visually on WGN, and over the airwaves on 670 The Score.
*No one says this.
Lead photo courtesy Brad Mills—USA Today Sports.