Cubs 8, Cardinals 4

In Postgame by berselius195 Comments

OSS: Cyle takes care of business, the Cardinals defense not so much.

Three up:

  1. Kyle Hendricks threw eight innings, striking out just two but mostly limiting the damage by the Cards offense. Most importantly, he limited the Cubs bullpen from making an appearance, as all of the semi-reliable guys left on the roster had pitched in the past few games. Hendricks finishes the year with 199 IP, the highest of his career, and with a 3.2 fWAR. This is a tick above his ZIPS projection, mostly due to the extra innings, and leads the Cubs pitching staff. On the one hand that’s kind of disappointing, but aside from a few outliers, the  NL itself had kind top-heavy year – that 3.2 fWAR is still good enough for 12th in the NL, even if it doesn’t come close to the likes of deGrom and Scherzer.
  2. Kris Bryant hit one to to the roof of the batters’ eye in his first start back from being hit on the wrist earlier this week, which is a very encouraging sign.
  3. I just had the radio for this one, but they had plenty of praise for David Bote’s glove at 3B in this one. He also drew a bases loaded walk in the eighth as the Cubs piled on.

Three down:

  1. The Cardinals sloppy defense was a big help in this one, but the Cubs were also charged with three errors. Luckily two of them were in the ninth when the game was already well in hand.
  2. Javy had a rought day, going 0-4 with three strikeouts.
  3. The Brewers won, coming back multiple times against the Tigers to win 6-5. It looks like Yelich has the NL MVP locked up after this week. The Magic number is down to 2, so the Cubs could clinch in either of these games this weekend with a little help from Detroit. But the Beers certainly aren’t going away. Given the Cubs schedule the past few weeks a tiebreaker might be even worse than losing the division outright.

Next up: The Cubs will have their hands full today against Miles Mikolas, who takes on Cole Hamels in a early 12:05 start.

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Comments

  1. dmick89

    Baseball needs to just copy what the NBA does for the playoffs as far as tiebreakers and seeding teams goes. It’s kind of ridiculous that the teams with the two best records in the NL who are already in the playoffs could potentially play a game 163. It’s stupid.

    here’s my suggested tiebreaker: Pythagorean record. It rewards the team who was the best in terms of runs scored and runs allowed. Take the decimal out as far as you have to break the tie.

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  12. Berselius is too lazy to login

    SK,

    You’re missing the trenchant analysis that Mikolas is a pitcher and that the Cardinals need to score runs.

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  21. Berselius is too lazy to login

    I’m not exactly sure how Smotlz feels about analytics, he needs to talk about this for the next 4 innings to get that message across

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  26. dmick89

    Tied going into tomorrow, how do you play it? I’d be tempted to rest all the regulars since the Cubs have gotten screwed with having so few days off over the last 6-7 weeks.

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  58. Perkins

    Assuming the Cubs and Brewers are still tied at the end of the day, Quintana is in line to start the tiebreaker tomorrow. Given the way he’s dominated the Brewers, I don’t hate that.

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  59. dmick89

    Perkins,

    I’m about 80% certain the Brewers will win today and 80% certain the Cubs will lose. I think there’s a chance there’s a game tomorrow, but it’s much more likely the Cubs get the day off and play on Tuesday.

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  61. dmick89

    I know that Joe didn’t use the 6-man rotation thing for more than a couple turns through the rotation, but it looks even dumber now that they’re tied with a game left. I also can’t believe how long Joe stuck with Chatwood, but I also still can’t believe the Cubs gave Chatwood anything more than a 1 year, $4-5 million contract to be their long man in the bullpen.

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  62. Perkins

    dmick89,

    In retrospect, all those starts from Chatwood are probably the most indefensible thing this season. A bunch of stuff went wrong from the injury side, but giving innings to a guy walking a batter per inning was an unforced error.

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  63. Perkins

    I also remember Brett’s repeatedly advocating a six man rotation over the summer, so I guess running a huge and profitable baseball site and providing good analysis are pretty different skillsets.

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  65. andcounting

    Perkins,

    I don’t know. It looks obvious, but part of the secret to that job of acquiring talent is spotting hidden potential. They had a theory and followed it. It failed. But they have to allow themselves to make mistakes, and I don’t mind them sticking with him long enough to know it wasn’t a small-sample fluke. And honestly, I’m not sure it wasn’t. He posted outlier-level career worsts in walks, walks/9, WHIP, SO/walk ratio, yet his SO/9 rate was better than ever (slightly). It’s hard to believe they shouldn’t have expected any of that to return to the mean. You know? Isn’t that the intellectual thing to trust even when the seemingly obvious gut reaction is to conclude he just plain sucks?

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  66. Rizzo the Rat

    I’ll just say that the Cubs probably projected to be a a 94-95-win team entering the season. They’ve lost a significant amount of productivity due to injuries to Bryant and Darvish, but they’ll still end up in that range. No matter how this season ends, I don’t think anyone can say this team has under-performed, given their roster.

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  67. andcounting

    andcounting,

    And just to be clear, Chatwood’s stats are waaaaaaay worse than they’ve ever been. He almost doubled his career walk rate. The signing was stupid, as it turns out, but his collapse could not have been foreseen, I don’t think.

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  69. andcounting

    All I know is this shit is a lot more fun than when they just plain suck ass and we’re choosing which team we least want to see lose while the Cubs golf.

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  70. dmick89

    Rizzo the Rat:
    I’ll just say that the Cubs probably projected to be a a 94-95-win team entering the season. They’ve lost a significant amount of productivity due to injuries to Bryant and Darvish, but they’ll still end up in that range. No matter how this season ends, I don’t think anyone can say this team has under-performed, given their roster.

    I complain a lot about this team, but I completely agree with this. We can’t control how good our competition is and Milwaukee is just really good. It sucks, but that’s how it is.

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  73. Perkins

    I also imagine executives at MLB and broadcasting companies will be infuriated if the Wild Card game ends up being CHC-LAD, since the other three markets in the NL are pretty small.

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  74. dmick89

    Perkins:
    dmick89,

    I consistently have trouble accepting that the Brewers are as good as they are with their rotation.

    The exact same thing could be said of the Cubs. I think it’s that their offense is good enough to make up for it. Same with the Brewers.

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  77. Berselius is on an airplane

    To-day’s base ball squadron

    2B Murphy
    RF Zobrist
    SS Baez
    1B Rizzo
    3B Bryant
    CF Heyward
    LF War Bear
    C Contreras
    P Montgomery

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  84. Rizzo the Rat

    Rizzo the Rat:
    I’ll just say that the Cubs probably projected to be a a 94-95-win team entering the season. They’ve lost a significant amount of productivity due to injuries to Bryant and Darvish, but they’ll still end up in that range. No matter how this season ends, I don’t think anyone can say this team has under-performed, given their roster.

    I take it all back. This team blows.

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  91. andcounting

    I think Javy is tired. He has had pretty smart, patient at bats, but he just hasn’t hit the ball hard very much at all.

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  101. dmick89

    BVS,

    Yeah, but I think there needs to be more time between the end of the season and the playoffs. It would accomplish two things: provide 5-7 days in which teams can make up a game or two so that they aren’t playing in 40 of 41 days and it would give players a little extra time to get rested and healthy.

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  131. EnricoPallazzo

    BVS,
    Ranking of things that are best on September 30:
    1. Not caring about baseball because your team locked up the division in early september
    2. Tight race
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    8 billion. Not caring about baseball because your team has been out of it since memorial day (possibly having something to do with neifi perez and/or shawn estes)

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  133. BVS

    EnricoPallazzo:
    BVS,
    Ranking of things that are best on September 30:
    1. Not caring about baseball because your team locked up the division in early september
    2. Tight race
    .
    .
    .
    30ish. Being thankful for those extra wins that denied us Mark Appel.
    .
    .
    8 billion. Not caring about baseball because your team has been out of it since memorial day (possibly having something to do with neifi perez and/or shawn estes)

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  148. North Side Pat

    Alec Mills is both pitching and hitting in a crucial Cubs game, just like we all predicted before the season started.

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  170. SK

    Christopher Kamka
    @ckamka
    14 minutes ago

    Javier Báez with his 40th double.

    First player in #Cubs history wity 40+ doubles, 30+ HR & 20+ stolen bases in a season.

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  178. Berselius is on an airplane

    GW,

    My always reliable memory seems to think the Cubs won a Q-Chacin matchup a week or two ago.

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  186. JKV

    Two teams that are guaranteed to make the playoffs are forced to play a tiebreaker game because the MLB has never heard of run differential.

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  188. andcounting

    This is pretty fun. Cubs and Brewers in a winner-take-half tiebreaker. It’s also pretty funny that after 162 games we know precisely 1 of the 5 NL playoff slots.

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  189. Smokestack Lightning

    Perkins,

    I think the penalty for the Cardinals shitting the bed the final week is appropriate.

    Although, it’s possible MLB will now give them another competitive balance pick, because clearly they don’t have the resources to compete for a full season.

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  191. Smokestack Lightning

    Perkins,

    And, it can’t go without saying in the “whatever else happens” category:

    For a team for which it feels like very little has gone right this year, for a team I’ve rarely felt good about, they’ve certainly won a lot of games.

    Maybe they can win 12 more.

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  194. Smokestack Lightning

    dmick89,

    No kidding. Outside of Javy having a breakout season, I’m struggling to be all that impressed about anything else.

    And yet here we are. 95 wins. A pretty damn good run differential. How the hell did they do it?

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