Second City October: Blanked Again

This piece, written by BP Wrigleyville’s Jared Wyllys, forms part of our in-house coverage of the Cubs in the playoffs, “Second City October.” Additional Game Three coverage can be found here.

“Just rearrange the deck chairs and see how it plays.” — Joe Maddon

In hindsight, probably a poorly chosen allusion for Maddon, though it’s provided a tasty morsel for detractors to seize upon when penning the 2016 Cubs obituary, if it comes to that. Which, as things stand now, that feels just days away. The postseason has already been full of magic, much of it in the Cubs’ favor so far, but as quickly as it has come, it sure looks gone. The Lord giveth; the Lord taketh away.

The setting for Game Three shifted to southern California following the bruising shutout loss on Sunday night, and with it the celebrity team representative in the first row swapped Eddie Vedder for Larry King. Despite Jake Arrieta’s stated comfort with pitching at Chavez Ravine, the Dodgers handled him well. He did not pitch poorly, but rather they jumped on the handful of mistake pitches when they came. The stamp of intimidation he left in Hollywood back in August of 2015 has faded, and though his beard and glowering stare still look imposing, his pitching wasn’t tonight.

His counterpart, Rich Hill, for his journey back to baseball relevance, shook off a wobbly second inning and looked more like a grizzled veteran of October baseball than someone who was struggling in independent baseball just a season ago. He kept the Cubs hitters off balance with his curveball early in the game and then went to his fastball in the later innings to finish his part of the job before turning it over to the bullpen.

This game was very much about that second inning, though, because if it shifts even slightly in Chicago’s favor, the rest of the night probably shifts with it. The Cubs posed their strongest threat to score first, or score at all, for that matter. Walks from Anthony Rizzo and Jorge Soler and a passed ball during Addison Russell’s at bat put both Rizzo and Soler in scoring position with just one out recorded. That’s a situation that boasts a run expectancy score of 1.376. There are only a handful of situations with higher run expectancy, but the Cubs squandered that opportunity with mastery.

In that inning, the Cubs made Dodgers starter Rich Hill look the most uncomfortable that he would all night, but his last two outs in that inning also provided an apt preview for the remainder of his outing.

The Los Angeles offense mirrored this almost perfectly, pushing across their first run just an inning later. The playoffs are almost always a time for a surprise player to simmer to the surface and make his mark, and while the Giants boasted Conor Gillaspie while it lasted, the Dodgers might have their answer to that in Andrew Toles. He opened the third inning by singling to left, and then advanced to second on Rich Hill’s sacrifice grounder to third—icing on a thoroughly strong night from Hill. Eventually, Corey Seager’s single scored Toles from third.

But though one run proved sufficient on Sunday night, Los Angeles wisely piled on in the following inning. Josh Reddick singled with one out, and then after Joc Pederson struck out swinging, Yasmani Grandal put together a clinic of an at bat that culminated in a two-run homer. After falling behind in the count, he worked the count full by fouling off a pair of pitches until Jake Arrieta had thrown three outside of the zone. The eighth pitch, a 93 mile per hour fastball that was low enough to do the job for Arrieta, but Grandal reached for it and drove it to the seats.

If those first three runs were the gut punch, Justin Turner’s first pitch solo shot in the sixth inning was the dagger. Arrieta’s final pitch of the night, a slider that coasted into the zone shy of 86 miles per hour when he’s averaged nearly 90 with that pitch this season, was all Turner needed. They’d tally another pair of runs in the eighth on a single from Yasiel Puig, and a double from Pederson. After stealing third base, Pederson scored the final run of the night when Javier Baez slightly bobbled a grounder from Grandal, but by then the numbness had set in.

The Cubs hitting from the primary pieces of their offense has inspired speculation that a problem has been exposed, and though characterizing it that way rankled many at first because what’s happening looks more the product of poorly timed and coinciding slumps from nearly the entire offense, but it’s probably not entirely off base. In the piece for FOX Sports, Dieter Kurtenbach sagely pointed out that the Cubs have seen success so far in the postseason because of their depth, good pitching, and fortunate breaks from batters like Miguel Montero, but he never identifies why the key Chicago hitters aren’t doing their jobs, and that’s the deck chair that Joe Maddon still needs to figure out.

On one hand, the answer might be as simple as bad timing. Hitters go through slumps—heck, entire offenses go through slumps— and this isn’t exactly new, but in the expanse of a long regular season, a stretch like this doesn’t bury a team. But the baseball postseason is antithetical to the regular season in this way. A 4-7 stretch in, say, July doesn’t register, but in the middle of October, it means the season’s over.

If it’s more complex than that, credit is probably due to Dave Roberts and his staff. Perhaps they’ve just planned effectively and found a way to render a dominant offense quiet for long enough to move past them into the next round. If this is the case, it still doesn’t explain the poor hitting from the likes of Rizzo and Russell even in the divisional series, so perhaps we’re back to just an unfortunate slump.

So while right now it might feel a bit like the lights are turning out on a season that has held greater promise than perhaps any other in living Cubs fans’ memories, it’s good to remember two things: 1) There are potentially four games left in this series, two of which would be at Wrigley Field, and 2) Last Tuesday night’s WPA-defying victory to end the NLDS demonstrated at least that this team will absolutely claw until the last out.

Lead photo courtesy Richard Mackson—USA Today Sports.