The Caray-Carey Series (that’s Harry versus Drew, for those scratching their heads) is knotted at one game apiece, with a pair of games in Cleveland split due to hot bats and hotter starting pitching. The contrast between the two games is nigh impossible to overstate, with the Cubs’ hitters rallying frequently in Game Two after failing to make a mark against Cleveland’s top pitchers in Game One. It was a predictable outcome: most anticipated Game One to be the Cubs’ toughest of the series, facing a fresh Corey Kluber and Andrew Miller, and Cleveland stared down a longshot in Game Two with Trevor Bauer facing a dominant Cubs offense.
With three at Wrigley Field on the docket for the weekend, the Cubs now regain their series favorite status. Either team can clinch on Sunday with three consecutive victories, but it’s the Cubs who lick their lips at the prospect of going home and facing Josh Tomlin.
Gibsonian Efforts
Kyle Schwarber might be from Ohio, but he’s not low on the ends and high in the middle. Rather, the Buckeye State product is highest at the end of the season, when it matters most: his two RBI singles last night, combined with Ben Zobrist’s continued hot streak and Jake Arrieta’s sloppy excellence, sealed a series-tying victory for the Cubs on Wednesday night, threatened all night by rain that never materialized. After solid at-bats versus Cleveland’s best pitchers on Tuesday night, replete with a near-home run, Schwarber showed the whole country why the Cubs were reluctant to deal him this summer, and why they were confident that the young slugger would contribute more than just cheers to this National League champion club.
It’s unlikely that Schwarber will be cleared to play the outfield this weekend at Wrigley, and he was coy about the possibility in a postgame interview on Fox with Tom Verducci (as expected). Joe Maddon hasn’t ruled it out, but Schwarber’s tentative body language in the interview, and a previous comment that he would not be able to play the field, point toward caution. He’s working out in the field today, and the matchups over the weekend are favorable for him, so if the front office and Maddon and Schwarber agree that he’s capable, he’ll be in the lineup Friday night.
Montgomery Burns the Cuyahoga
The Cubs once again relied on their recently acquired utility lefty, Mike Montgomery, to face some key hitters in the middle innings of a pivotal playoff game. After impressive performances in the Division and Championship Series, in which Montgomery tossed 9 ⅔ innings of four-run ball. Wednesday, he walked two and allowed one hit in two innings of relief following Jake Arrieta. He also struck out four hitters, using his sweeping knuckle curve with deep downward action to make Cleveland hitters look foolish.
The Cubs ‘pen is well rested after the layoff between series and multiple days in between appearances for every pitcher. Aroldis Chapman tacked on a low-stress ninth, and he’ll be ready to pitch in, possibly, all three games at Wrigley. With the series moving a few hundred miles west, the Cubs’ pitching depth is beginning to pay dividends, while Cleveland scrambles to cobble together innings outside of its big three.
A “Smooth” Transition
Carlos Santana and Mike Napoli, the dominant pair of sluggers making their homes on the shores of Lake Erie, tied for the team lead in home runs this season, with 34 each. They split time at first base and designated hitter, with Napoli garnering nearly a hundred games on the defensive side and Santana with nearly a hundred at DH. With the DH out of commission in the NL park for the next three games, Terry Francona will have to decide if he wants to start Santana in left field. The pair have twelve total major-league appearances in left between them in 18 combined seasons, so one of them would be playing through the naivete.
Wrigley’s brick wall, only partially covered now by the withering late-October ivy, looms in the minds of Francona and anyone who might be tasked with patrolling the expanses of the outfield pastures. For a veteran, it kills ambitions of leaping grabs and home runs stolen. For an outfield neophyte like Santana or Napoli, it creates a force field that wards of fielders and turns doubles into triples. With the Cubs offense ready to tee off on Tomlin and Bauer, Cleveland will need impact offensive players, and they’ll have to find a spot for them.
Close and Late: Miller at the Plate?
Speaking of those big three: Andrew Miller didn’t see action Wednesday after a 40-plus pitch outing the previous night. Word was that he would be available, although one suspects it would have been only for a high-leverage scenario against one of the Cubs’ lefty mashers. He looked slightly less than stellar on Tuesday, not his world dominating self of the postseason so far, but still a far cry from “bad.”
Cleveland skipper Terry Francona will be pressed into more difficult situations as the series moves to the National League park, with it’s attendant “pitchers hit as the creator intended” rule, and his primary conundrum will involve Miller. Miller’s utility is not just in his deadly fastball-slider combo that comes at the hitter from tough angles; it’s also in his ability to throw several innings with little tax on his rubber band arm. He threw two innings in Game One, bringing his total batters faced this postseason to 51 over 13 ⅔ innings, with an astounding 24 strikeouts. Francona wants Miller in the game as often and as long as possible, but the chances of Miller’s spot in the lineup coming around in the middle-to-late innings of a game at Wrigley Field are high.
The freakishly slender, all-legs lefty began his career as a starter and spent three subsequent years toiling in Miami, so he’s not foreign to the feel of a pine-tarred Louisville Slugger in his grasp. But, in the World Series, one tries not to send up to the plate a relief pitcher who has spent years in the American League. In a tied or close game, Francona will likely have to decide whether he wants Miller to snag one more precious inning at the expense of sending up a hitter to the plate, and he may have to harken back to his Phillies days–sixteen years ago now–to bone up on his double switch techniques.
The narrative fabric of the playoffs is thick with threads of bullpen dominance and bullpen failure. Francona will need to draw upon his considerable wisdom and boldness to make sure his players remain staunchly in the former category. For his part, Joe Maddon will have the difficult call of putting Schwarber in the outfield or reserving his bat for a pinch-hit appearance, pending his health. It’s a series that can pivot in one at-bat, and, as I’ve mentioned in previous playoff updates, the gains and losses at the margins are magnified in short series. One team is going to emerge from Wrigley this weekend with slivers of hope glimmering through those margins; the other will ponder what might have been. These next three games are pregnant with historical meaning, their narrative heft considerable.
Lead photo courtesy Ken Blaze—USA Today Sports.