This series needed a laugher, didn’t it? For the first several innings of Game Five on Thursday night, it appeared that Kenta Maeda might stymie the Cubs’ bats just long enough to bridge the gap to the overworked bullpen. After he slipped the grip of a tense second inning, you would have been forgiven if you thought it would be a game defined by opportunities not seized by the Cubs.
The story of the game, and the series, changed with Addison Russell’s two-run homer in the sixth, his second in as many games, and the Cubs exploited a series of blunders by a flustered Dodgers defense to help put Los Angeles in their rearview. Jon Lester penned another chapter in his tome of playoff excellence, in direct defiance of the Dodgers’ game plan to get under his skin, and the Cubs not only survived their trip out west, but came away with two key victories.
It’s the Pitching, Stupid
James Carville and the Clinton campaign famously hammered home the importance of the economy in their 1992 presidential bid, and here, congruously in the midst of another Clinton campaign, a national team of Narrative Doctors have their laser focus on the pitching economy of the series.
Lester sneered at the Dodger dugout through seven innings in Game Five, and Maeda nestled into his butt imprint on the bench by the fourth inning. In the previous game, John Lackey exited after four innings and Julio Urias after 3 ⅔, with the Cubs’ bullpen acquitting itself well and the Dodgers’ bullpen showing signs of fatigue. Pedro Baez (and his pitching pace, which probably deserves its own geological era) hasn’t succeeded in the fireman role that Dave Roberts has thrust upon him. Joe Blanton, whose surprising success as a setup man put into motion one of the finest stories of this baseball season, has found himself on the short end of a Freaky Friday switch with Mitch Williams, surrendering two vital home runs in the series. The Cubs have been able to get to the Ross Striplings of the world, fine relievers but hardly the pitchers you want in the game with your season on the line.
If you somehow don’t have the image of Clayton Kershaw in his sweatband and vibrant Southern California tanktop burned into your brain (seriously Fox, we get it—he works out), you’ll soon be forced to confront the lefty world beater again. The Dodgers are banking on another stellar Kershaw performance, on the heels of seven shutout innings Sunday, for the first time on regular rest these playoffs. The Cubs are locked in at the plate and their performances against Kershaw should be slightly better, if only because of the law of averages. Kershaw’s only turned in that one good start these playoffs, though; the Nationals touched him up in two outings, and he’s not invulnerable.
The Cubs counter with Kyle Hendricks, who nearly matched Kershaw on Sunday for 5 ⅓ innings despite lacking his best command. The Dodgers will revert to their normal lineup versus righties, after a head scratching departure against the lefty Lester, in which Carlos Ruiz hit cleanup. Heightened are the stakes at the game’s margins, and Dave Roberts will pull out all the stops to get his best pitchers the most innings and the key situations. It remains to be seen if the heretofore conservative Joe Maddon will counter inventively in his bullpen usage. In two games where Maddon’s tactics could have made a difference, he’s bungled his bullpen: Game Three in San Francisco, and Game One in Los Angeles. Will Mike Montgomery, Carl Edwards, and Justin Grimm see the middle innings, or will the skipper bite the bullet and throw Hector Rondon and Pedro Strop if it’s close? The former is likely, but the latter might be necessary.
The Old House Is Still Standing, Though the Paint is Cracked and Dry
The Cubs escaped L.A., not on a surfboard shredding the apocalyptic tubes, but rather strutting out with their heads held high and their press conferences held boringly. They return to Wrigley Field needing a lone win in two games; their win probability… ya know what, I’m not going to tell you the odds. Google them if you need to sate your morbid curiosity. What we know is that the Cubs are positioned very well: their bats are alive, their starting pitching should be excellent, and they’ll grace the cozy lawn of Wrigley for a minimum of two more games this season.
We’re in rarefied air. The Cubs have gained a game advantage in the NLCS for the first time in you-know-how-many years, and, unless you’re 71-plus years old, this is tied for the closest the Cubs have come to making it to the World Series in your lifetime. It’s an intergenerational suffering, which is what differentiates it from Dodgers’ fans suffering and likens it to that of Cleveland fans. Like the narrator in Tom Jones’ classic “Green, Green Grass of Home,” Cubs fans have found themselves daydreaming of these moments for thirteen years, for 32 years, for 47 years, only to be awoken to find those “four gray walls”—for Jones a literal prison, for Cubs fans the figurative confinement of the emotional conditioning produced by generations of kinship in dread. The Cubs have two games to bury those feelings under the bleachers. Oh, and Jake Arrieta pitches on Sunday.
Lead photo courtesy Jon Durr—USA Today Sports.