Talk about a sudden fall from grace. The Cubbies finished game 162 with the best record in the NL. After a few short days and only two games, they will be watching the playoffs on TV with the rest of us.
For the second game in a row, they could not produce any offense in the friendly confines. They could manage only five singles and a double in 13 innings. Combined with the previous day’s game, their batters went 9-for-71. That’s a mighty .127 batting average if you’re scoring at home.
They lost both games at home despite a sterling staff ERA of 2.05 and a solid performance from both starters, who allowed only two runs between them.
Dennis: Horrible irony there. Jason Kipnis made a wee mistake in his game 7 9th inning AB. You usually get the bat going a little faster for Chapman. But with the genius having overused him he was throwing noticeably slower. And JK didn’t pick up on it. The resulting swing was just a little ahead – and the ball went very slightly foul instead of being a walkoff. Oh well, one of these years… They have a good Sneak Up Factor right now – maybe their best since 97 and no Jose Mesa (another woman abuser) to screw it up.
Cubs had more good luck than you could shake a stick at in 2016. Complete to having their one significant injury case coming back when he wasn’t supposed to and getting to be in a situation where his big bat got exposure but not his “glove”. Their opponents had lost 2 of their top 3 starters in Sept. And Baez (who will swing at anything in the same zip) must have thought he had died and gone to heaven when he saw that fattie on an 0-2 count last night. Btw, Tito ate the Genius’ lunch. Go Tribe!!
Part of their luck in ’16 was picking up wife-beater Chapman as a rental at the deadline and then keeping him out there for twice his normal relief innings. They made no attempt to keep him after the season ended. I think they are paying for selling their soul on that one.
That’s just the nature of Wild Card playoff games — they are a crapshoot, because bad teams can beat good teams if it’s just a single game (remember, the Orioles beat the Red Sox three times this year, and the Yankees seven times). Luck plays a big role, and the Cubs always have bad luck, so the outcome is no big surprise.