It has become something of a perverse given to grant the Giants this game. Not because the numbers play out in San Francisco’s favor particularly heavily, but because the playoffs inspire such a concentrated focus on intangibles, so it is assumed that Madison Bumgarner will simply toss another complete game shutout and salvage his team’s season for at least one more day.
The Cubs do have justifiable confidence going into Game Three tonight, though. Their weekend was not without blemish, but it still yielded two wins in two games with just one more needed to go. There are a handful of teams since the divisional series was introduced as a part of the playoffs who have gone on to win after going down two games to none, including the 2012 rendition of the Giants, but those examples are so heavily outweighed by the teams who haven’t come back from that deficit that pointing to the teams that did feels frivolous.
Historical examples don’t really do much to shed light on this series anyway, particularly because the 2016 Cubs are in a special class. I’ll resist waxing poetic here, but for all of the success San Francisco has had in the last decade, they look overmatched in this series so far. They’re up against the product of the machinations of Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and Jason McLeod that is already years in the making. As others have said, the Cubs now might be what the Giants were in 2010.
Jake Arrieta vs. Madison Bumgarner
| IP | oppTAv | cFIP | DRA | |
| Arrieta | 197.3 | .264 | 94 | 4.02 |
| Bumgarner | 226.7 | .260 | 89 | 3.25 |
Closer examination beyond the above numbers would show that Bumgarner possess slightly better peripherals, but it’s not drastic. He boasts a career-high 10 K/9 rate this season, but his career average of 8.9 sits much closer to Arrieta’s career 8.2. Despite worries about Arrieta’s increased tendency to walk batters, he and Bumgarner put runners on base at strikingly similar rates, though through different means. Arrieta’s WHIP of 1.08 comes from more walks and fewer hits than Bumgarner, where Bumgarner’s 1.02 comes from the reverse. He is likely to give up more hits but less likely to walk Cubs batters. The difference in WHIP of 0.06 is tiny across the breadth of a season, but one or two extra baserunners can be the deciding element in a game like tonight’s.
These two have built a bit of history against each other. During a spring training game in March, the two squared off in a nationally televised contest now best known for Bumgarner’s insistence that Jason Heyward and Dexter Fowler were stealing signs. In a spring training game. Stealing signs.
More pertinent, however, was the matchup between these two in early September. In that game, Bumgarner struck out 10 in six innings and allowed just two runs. Arrieta’s afternoon was similar. He, too, pitched six innings, and he struck out seven and gave up just two runs. If tonight’s game has an precedent, it’s that. Though Arrieta’s most recent start was discouraging for those who place weight on things like a single start in a meaningless game at the very end of the season, he’s since vowed to pitch differently. Arrieta is sounding like the version of himself who challenged the Pirates and their fans on Twitter a year ago, and then delivered.
His counterpart, Bumgarner, boasts a most recent start with quite a bit more luster. In the Wild Card game last week, he went frame for frame with Noah Syndergaard and simply outlasted him by one inning. As we know, that one inning made the difference.
Arrieta and Bumgarner will hope to go toe to toe in the same fashion tonight. Bumgarner has thrown at least eight innings in a start six times this year, and Arrieta has five times. The two pitchers actually stack up very similarly, but where Bumgarner is the sturdy and reliable ace of his team, Arrieta has somehow found himself in a perplexing fall from grace, relative to the heights he’s seen before.
That’s the trap of his brilliance last season, and also the product of the work of Jon Lester and Kyle Hendricks this season. Arrieta has fallen a bit from even his 2014 performance, but he would still be anchoring most staffs around the league, so this is far from a throwaway game for Chicago. True, fans can breathe a little easier with the two game cushion and a promised Game Five at Wrigley on Thursday if necessary, but they should also be breathing easier because the Cubs—to put it admittedly somewhat crudely—aren’t sending a chump to the mound tonight.
What to Watch For
More Javier Baez. This will rankle the Giants on their fans, and maybe another San Francisco pitcher takes it upon himself—a la Hunter Strickland—to send a message via a meatheaded throw to the ribs, but it’s the kind of play that Baez commits to in every game that pens his name on the lineup card so often. I’ve said it elsewhere, but runs are not to be waited on in the postseason, and Baez’s assertiveness on the basepaths still creates more runs than it costs. Put this together with defense at multiple positions across the infield that parallels, or even surpasses, the level of the everyday starters.
Baez is stepping onto the national stage in this series, and as that happens, many will miss the fact that he is a Cubs’ utility player, by all rights. In his way, Baez is a microcosm of the depth of the Cubs franchise. Not many organizations could afford to let their Albert Almoras spend most of the year seasoning in Triple-A, for instance. Or that could have the luxury of leaving players like Matt Szczur and Trevor Cahill off of their division series rosters. It’s this position-by-position depth that is at the crux of why the Cubs are so hard to beat.
Finally, to borrow from an expression common among Chicago Bears fans when characterizing Jay Cutler’s performances, it would be easy to frame this game’s outcome around whether the Cubs get “Good Jake” or “Bad Jake,” but that would be off center. This game is about the bullpens. It’s about getting to the Giants’ bullpen as early as possible, if at all, and about the formidable strength of the bullpen for Chicago. When they’re not hitting home runs, the Cubs boast the ability to send closer-worthy pitchers to the mound for close to four innings, so it may not matter if Arrieta can only give Joe Maddon five strong innings, and that might be the best approach anyway.
Broadcast Information
After Game Two on Saturday night was aired on MLB Network, tonight’s contest returns to FOX Sports 1, and can be heard on 670 AM as always. The official start time is 8:38 pm CT, so a late afternoon coffee might be wise.
Lead photo courtesy Dennis Wierzbicki—USA Today Sports.