I’ll forgive you a little frustration, if you’re feeling it. This game, like last night’s loss before it, featured an unusually high proportion of missed offensive opportunities, poorly-placed ground balls, and Brandon Moss. There haven’t been a lot of games like this for the Cubs in 2016—to be frank, this one felt more like a 2014-era performance than anything else—but there’ve now been two in a row, and against the Cardinals at that. It doesn’t mean anything—this team was excellent yesterday, excellent today, and will be excellent tomorrow—but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have felt a lot better if the Cubs had, you know, won these games. Anyway. Let’s get through this thing.
Top Play (WPA): It should have been a homer, the way it was hit. 71 percent of the time so far this year, it has been a homer. And yet, the ball that Addison Russell hit off of Adam Wainwright to lead off the seventh inning wasn’t a homer, it was a double (+0.136) instead. That ended up mattering quite a bit, because the game was at that point 4-3 Redbirds, and Russell ended up stranded at second base, just where he started the inning. A homer, of course, would have tied the game. Just the kind of frustrating night the Cubs had today. Worth noting, though: Russell has started to swing the bat a little bit. He had three hits tonight—one, teasingly, in the ninth—and has two of the season’s six home runs since June 13th. Russell has never been a player who has to rely on a power stroke to produce value—his defense and gap-to-gap power is more than enough to make him a valuable regular—but the fact is that any added power makes him an All-Star, and easily at that. Watch out, if he gets things going properly.
Bottom Play (WPA): It seems that I’ve spent half my life writing about Matt Holliday home runs against the Chicago Cubs. And yet, here we find ourselves, on the 21st day of June, in the 2,016th year of this age, and there’s another Holliday home run to write home about. This one came in the third inning, with the Cardinals up 2-1, and Aledmys Diaz dancing off first base. It wasn’t a terrible pitch by Jason Hammel—he threw very few of those tonight—but it was a pitch Holliday likes to hit, and it was promptly deposited into the seats (-0.154) to give the Cards a 4-1 lead. They wouldn’t score again, but it wouldn’t matter: neither would the Cubs. Also worth noting: Matt Holiday is a much better hitter than you think he is. Just go look at his numbers.
Key Moment: Well, there were a lot. You could point to the ninth inning, when the Cubs put runners on first and second before ending the game on a Matt Szczur ground ball up the middle. Or you could point to the sixth inning, when Willson Contreras grounded into a double play to end another scoring opportunity. Or the fifth, when Albert Almora, Jr. grounded into a double play of his own (this one, admittedly, scoring Contreras) and muted what might have been a Cubs rally in that inning. Or the third, when … you get the idea. So instead, I’ll talk about the seventh inning, when Jason Heyward came to the plate with two men on in a one-run game and grounded the ball sharply down the right-field line and right at—you guessed it—Brandon Moss. That ended that inning, and the Cubs headed onwards with the deficit still intact.
Trend to Watch: The trend to watch for the last few days—really, ever since he came up—has been the degree to which Willson Contreras earns and deserves the respect of the starting pitchers who throw to him. We know he can hit: he’s proved that in level after level in the minor leagues. Can he catch, though? Can he call a game? That’s less evident, though it’s certainly not out of the question. John Lackey seemed notably off his game in Monday’s performance against the Cardinals, and while it’s difficult (nigh impossible) to pin that on Contreras, it certainly would have been better for his case if Lackey had looked just great. Happily, Jason Hammel looked relatively comfortable out there tonight, and certainly no less comfortable than he ever has. Contreras is likely to get quite a few starts over the next few days, so keep watching the rhythm between the two battery-mates as we proceed: it’ll be key (though not exclusively so) to how the Cubs approach the catcher position for the rest of the season, and even into the offseason and early part of 2017.
Coming Next: ESPN The Magazine “Body Issue” star me Jake Arrieta will match up against Michael Wacha in the finale in Chicago—if it gets played. There’s the possibility of cataclysmic storms in the Chicago area tomorrow, and some of them are scheduled to arrive right around the finale’s 1:20 ct first pitch. If there’s a gap in the forecast, expect the officials to try to get the game in, but I wouldn’t be so sure: the forecast looks really bad. If the game is broadcast, you’ll be able to catch it on ABC 7 and AM 670 The Score.
Lead photo courtesy Caylor Arnold—USA Today Sports.