Game 93 Recap: Mets 2 Cubs 1

Tuesday night’s game was one of the biggest wins of the Cubs’ season to date, and the scoreboard didn’t even show it.

The Arrieta Section: Unsure where this should fall in the narrative of the game itself, I decided it was worth simply breaking it out into its own space. Jake Arrieta, the ace who carried the Cubs to the playoffs last season and dominated the first two months of 2016, made a triumphal return on Tuesday night. Given the equivalent of a skipped start of rest thanks to the All-Star break and a shuffled rotation coming out of it, Arrieta found the consistency that had been missing from his delivery. He located all his pitches well, got early swings and contact, and missed bats with his slider. He couldn’t have pitched much better. If this Arrieta is back for good, the Cubs are once again the class not only of the NL Central, but of the entire league.

Top Play (WPA): After a stellar pitchers’ duel (during which Arrieta outpitched Noah Syndergaard, but which also saw Syndergaard pitch brilliantly against a grinding, patient Cubs offense), the Mets took a 2-1 lead in the top of the ninth inning. Hector Rondon remains one of the NL’s best closers, but Tuesday night highlighted one occasional weakness: he doesn’t always miss bats like an elite reliever. This is precisely the point at which, last summer, Rondon hit a bit of a wall and stopped racking up strikeouts to match his overpowering stuff. The Mets, whose offense is as home run-centric as any team’s, strung together three singles to scratch across a run.

In the bottom of the ninth, though, the Cubs fought back, hard. Jeurys Familia walked Addison Russell in a full count, with Russell checking his swing impressively. (Russell had what briefly looked like a key single earlier in the game, on a Syndergaard pitch at which he swung less hard and more quickly than usual. It was the second game in a row in which he’s gotten a hit that way. Despite his sky-high strikeout rate since reaching MLB, Russell continues to show plenty of the above-average hit tool scouts saw in him throughout his time in the minors.) Miguel Montero then walked on four pitches, bringing up Javier Baez.

Joe Maddon and company nearly derailed the inning right now, and arguably did so. They asked Baez to lay down a sacrifice bunt, and on a 1-1 pitch, he did finally get one down. Kind of. The chopped bunt was right down the third-base line, and looked like it would surely land and spin foul. Inexperienced third baseman Jose Reyes fielded it before it could do so, though, and had no chance to throw out Baez. The accidental single loaded the bases, with nobody out and the tying run at third base (+0.366 WPA).

Bottom Play (WPA): Alas, the rally died a painful and improbable death thereafter. Pinch-hitter Matt Szczur foolishly swung over the first pitch from Familia, a sinker at 98 miles per hour that was ankle-high. The pitch is a nasty one, and can be hard to lay off, but under the circumstances (not only understanding that a walk would tie the game, but knowing how wild Familia had been to that point), Szczur ought to have been taking all the way. That set the tone for a tough plate appearance, one in which Szczur swung defensively at five of the six pitches he saw. It ended with a trickling grounder to first baseman James Loney, who threw out Russell at home plate.

That brought up Kris Bryant, with a chance to be the hero. Bryant is perfect for that kind of situation, too. He’s an elite hitter, of course, but in particular, he’s an elite fly-ball hitter. He’s also fast. For those reasons, he’s one of the least likely hitters in baseball to ground into a double play. Chase Utley has yet to ground into a twin killing this season, in 33 opportunities. Chris Davis and Brett Gardner have grounded into one apiece, in 68 and 67 chances, respectively. Entering Tuesday, Bryant had grounded into only one double play in 88 chances this season.

Bryant grounded into a double play to end the game (-0.529 WPA). #Baseball.

Key Moment: Let’s dig into the decision to have Baez bunt. Sure, it worked—as well as it possibly could have, in fact. But it was a bad decision. Baez is a good hitter, and a hitter with power. He stood a perfectly good chance of not only tying the game, but winning it, in the plate appearance the Cubs instead gave away. It was also Baez who expressed optimism, when last the Cubs saw Familia in New York earlier this month, that the team could get to the Mets closer if they could just wait him out and hit his mistakes. He wasn’t given a chance to do so Tuesday night, and while it didn’t directly cost the Cubs the game, it was a surrender of a good opportunity.

Trend to Watch: The game Arrieta pitched is by far the most important takeaway from this game, but I discussed that above. The other thing worth mentioning about the game is that the Cubs gave away two more outs on the bases. With runners on second and third and nobody out in the bottom of the second, Miguel Montero grounded back to Syndergaard. Jason Heyward had been at third base, and took off for home on contact.

With the infield playing back, all Heyward would have had to do was make the ball get past Syndergaard before taking off for the plate. When the infield is in, all a runner needs to do is make sure the ball gets through before going home. If those things don’t happen, having taken off on contact will not allow a runner to score. The millisecond’s head start provided by going so soon won’t get them home safely. It is far more likely to leave them stranded, as Heyward was, between third base and home plate, chased into a rundown, then tagged out.

In the bottom of the fourth, Tommy La Stella singled with Arrieta on second base and two outs. Arrieta tried to score, but Michael Conforto easily threw him out. Contreras was thrown out on a similar play by Yoenis Cespedes on Monday night. The Cubs talk a lot about the virtues of aggressive baserunning—about forcing opponents to make the right play, about applying pressure—but they don’t seem to have found the balance between that aggressiveness and recklessness. Even on some occasions when the odds tip slightly in favor of sending a runner (as perhaps they did, in one of these situations, since it would have taken a two-out hit from the next batter or a mistake by the Mets to score either Contreras or Arrieta from third, and so they only had perhaps a 35 percent chance of scoring anyway), the team needs to rein it in. For one thing, this is a very good offense, so the odds of any runner scoring generally need to be better for the Cubs to send them than they would need to be for another team to do so. For another, there’s value simply in continuing to work a pitcher, force them to throw three more good pitches to get out of an inning, and turning over the lineup a little earlier later in the game. Outs on the base paths aren’t universally unacceptable, but given their team identity, the Cubs accept too many of them.

What’s Next: Sinkers and stellar command will be on display at Wrigley Field on Wednesday. Big, ancient Bartolo Colon will flatten the mound for the Mets, while Kyle Hendricks—thin and young, but also big (or at least bigger than you’d think; he stands six-foot-three), and just as dependent on command and changing speeds to make his sinker play up to its full potential—will go for the Cubs. The game will start at 1:20 PM, as most Wednesday afternoon games do, but in a fairly unprecedented step, ESPN is covering the game (for viewers outside the Chicago area). I can’t ever remember seeing the network broadcast an entire regular-season series before, but this week, it’s happening. Chicagoans can catch the game on ABC 7.

Lead photo courtesy Caylor Arnold—USA Today Sports.