Ding dong, the Streak is dead.
Top Play (WPA): When Willson Contreras stepped to the plate in the top of the seventh inning, the outcome of this game was very much in doubt. Even when the ball left his bat, it wasn’t exactly a sure thing. Heck, even as Giancarlo Stanton charged and gloved the ball, there was some cause for alarm. Contreras had singled cleanly into right field, with the go-ahead run on second base (in the person of fleet-footed Kris Bryant) and one out, but he’d hit the ball so hard—104 miles an hour, a sinking liner that reached Stanton on one longish hop—that it looked like Stanton might throw Bryant out at the plate. Only once Stanton wound up and flung in a poor throw was it clear that Bryant would score the run that ultimately won the game for Chicago (+0.179 WPA).
Bottom Play (WPA): Kyle Hendricks started the bottom of the first inning with a 4-0 lead, and you could argue that he deserved to finish it with that lead intact. The Cubs had rung Marlins starter Tom Koehler’s bell in the first frame, with home runs from Bryant and Contreras highlighting a four-run outburst. Derek Dietrich led off the frame for the trailing Marlins with a routine ground ball to short, but Addison Russell flubbed it. Martin Prado popped out, and Christian Yelich went down swinging, but sluggers Marcell Ozuna and Giancarlo Stanton each walked in 3-2 counts. (Both plate appearances included some close pitches called balls, too, highlighting the one thing at which Contreras so far seems not to be very good: pitch framing.) That brought up Justin Bour, and in an 0-1 count, Hendricks made his first real, honest-to-God mistake of the inning. Bour clobbered it over the center-field fence for a game-tying grand slam (-0.305 WPA), and it became clear that this would be no easy streak-breaker.
Key Moment: The Cubs’ four-game bender was fraught with big rallies that died small, silent deaths, but when they grabbed the lead Friday night, they held it firmly. Joe Maddon called on his bullpen starting in the sixth inning, but the big news was that he again brought in Hector Rondon to get the final four outs for the save. Rondon didn’t inherit the tying run on base, or anything, but he still risked giving up just one long ball and seeing the Cubs’ thin lead evaporate. He didn’t come close to doing so. Four up, four down, and the Cubs are no longer four games from their last win.
Trend to Watch: Anthony Rizzo missed his second game with a back issue. Miguel Montero also remains unavailable. The Cubs amassed tremendous positional depth this winter, but injuries are threatening to erode it entirely. This is still a team with at least two true stars (at least when Rizzo is healthy) and some dynamic young players, but ‘dynamic’ is a double-edged word, and sometimes a backhanded compliment. Unless and until Jorge Soler, Dexter Fowler and Tommy La Stella return to this team, and certainly until Rizzo and Montero are back to full strength, it’s fair to wonder whether the Cubs are the team who won 25 of their first 31, or the one that has won 23 of their last 41. (Of course, the answer is somewhere in between. But what fun is that answer?)
What’s Next: John Lackey tries to officially make it a winning streak Saturday afternoon, at 3:10 PM CT. Former Astros righty Paul Clemens has an awfully ugly MLB track record, and is making just the second start of his return to the Show for the first time since 2014. Catch the game on WGN.
Lead photo courtesy Steve Mitchell—USA Today Sports