For the second time in six postseason games, the Cubs pitched themselves into a game decided by a lonely solo home run. Of course, last night’s loss to the indomitable Clayton Kershaw was a far more bitter pill than their Game One NLDS victory, coming behind the strength of Jon Lester’s gem and Javier Baez’s blast. Such games are a hallmark of the playoffs, of course—the pitchers get better and the pressure is on, so run scoring opportunities are often hard to come by. For the Cubs, they’ve score 25 runs in six games, averaging nearly a run fewer per game than their season average, which ended up just over five per game.
There are four primary culprits in the mystery of the Cubs versus opposing pitchers. While Baez and Kris Bryant have made the most of their six starts and swatted the ball to the tune of OPSes over 1.000, Dexter Fowler, Anthony Rizzo, Ben Zobrist, and Addison Russell—four of the Cubs’ first five hitters—have struggled to make an impact with their bats.
The impressive 1.000+ OPS club boasts Bryant, Baez, Willson Contreras, and three pitchers. The Cubs’ production falls off a cliff after that. Fowler and Zobrist both rest in the mid-.500s, Zobrist with three doubles, Fowler with one home run and a double. Rizzo and Russell are in a miserable class of their own, with OPS totals (not batting average, not on-base percentage, but OPS) in the .100s. Each has one hit, to which Rizzo has added three walks. It’s no wonder that Bryant has only scored two runs, and only one not by home run, considering the utter impotence of the four players surrounding him in the lineup.
Jake Day
You would be forgiven if you were to forget Jake Arrieta’s Game Three start in the Division Series. By the end of that game, it was tough to remember that Arrieta had even pitched: 13 innings, a hot potato lead, a big hit from Conor Freakin’ Gillaspie, and a dramatic Kris Bryant homer served to cleanse Cubs’ fans memories of the Arrieta vs. Bumgarner billing that looked to be the most exciting game of the series. That anticipation proved correct, but not in the way most expected.
Arrieta enters Game Three of the NLCS, then, with his chance to leave a mark on this postseason. He squares off against Rich Hill, a pitcher so radically different from Arrieta that one might think that an Odd Couple-like comparison would be apt. Arrieta and Hill are more alike than you might imagine, however, and it all comes down to pitch selection.
Rich Hill is a two-pitch pitcher. It’s incredibly difficult to succeed at the major-league level with only two pitches, especially at the age of 36, but Hill has reinvented himself, in a case where the legend and the reality align, as a top of the rotation starter. In any given game, Hill will throw his curveball and fourseamer about half the time. 11 times in 2016 he’s thrown his curveball slightly more, and ten times has he thrown his fastball more. He rarely, if ever, mixes his slider or changeup into his selections. It works for him; Hill’s ridden that loopy curve to a season-and-a-half of dominance.
Jake Arrieta is not a two-pitch pitcher. He throws all five of his pitches—fourseam, sinker, slider/cutter, curve, and changeup—in just about every game, varying his use of each pitch depending on opposing lineup composition and his feel on that day. The latter has led to his eschewing of his best pitch, his slider/cutter hybrid, for the whole of the season. Nearly a month ago, I detailed Arrieta’s mechanical problems as a cause for that pitch’s ineffectiveness, but his start in San Francisco points him in a positive direction.
30 times, Arrieta delved into his bag of pitches for his slider. It was a plateau he reached only twice during the regular season, and since he threw fewer pitches last Monday, it was the highest percentage of sliders he has thrown since his Wild Card shutout in Pittsburgh last fall. If Arrieta is feeling his slider on Tuesday night, there’s no reason he can’t dominate at late-2015 levels. You know, in the ballpark where he threw his first no-hitter.
Mike Banghart will have the full Game Three preview tomorrow, with more on Arrieta, Hill, and the Cubs’ hitting woes.
No More Parties in L.A… Hopefully.
Dodger Stadium might have been glibly called a House of Horrors for the Cubs over the past decade-plus. Since the beginning of 2007, ten full seasons, the Cubs have gone 29-40 versus the Dodgers, their worst record against any National League opponent. In Los Angeles, they’re a paltry 12-21, a .375 winning percentage. Aside from Arrieta’s no-hitter late last season, there are few good memories for the Cubs in L.A.
As a junior in high school, in 2008, I brought my little radio to the homecoming dance, to the chagrin of my friends, to listen to Game Three of the Division Series. The Cubs were down 0-2 to the Dodgers and they were heading west, with “Mannywood” in full force. I got home just in time to witness the top of the ninth, with Alfonso Soriano flailing at a slider far out of the zone to end a whimpering showing by the Cubs’ hitters that series.
With this Cubs team’s bats so silent these playoffs, slight despair over the Cubs heading to Dodger Stadium is a reasonable feeling to harbor. But, as they’ve proved so many times this season, they’re not your parents’ Cubs, they’re not your grandparents’ Cubs, and they’re not the Cubs of my jittery, excitable high school days. A few key hits would do much to redeem the aforementioned quartet of sluggers, and there will assuredly be opportunities for them to come up big.
The Cubs need a single victory to bring this series back to Chicago for a Game Six. With Arrieta, Lackey, and Lester the probable starters, and with Kershaw not likely to pitch again until at least Thursday, the matchups are as favorable as they can be in the playoffs. They’ll try to do more than just prevent a Dodgers champagne celebration on home turf, though, and it starts with the Cubs’ best pitcher on Tuesday night.
Lead photo courtesy Jon Durr—USA Today Sports.