Brewers 9, Cubs 3

By
berselius
-
169

TLDR: Maybe don’t start a guy on short rest who has pitched more innings this year than his past three years combined on short rest?

Since time has no meaning, my brain didn’t twig to the fact that Boyd was starting on short rest until about an hour before game time, despite spending a bunch of time crunching the numbers to write the preview and I didn’t even notice. Boyd had absolutely nothing in the tank in this one, and a completely uncharacteristic / Devil Magic induced error by Nico Hoerner turned it from bad to worse.

Counsell’s hands were somewhat tied with their pitching staff injuries – that rib injury to Horton could not have come at a worse time. I would not have felt thrilled with Shawn Camp Memorial Staff MVPs Colin Rea and/or Javy Assad getting a start to open a playoff series, but I would have taken it over Boyd on short rest even aside from these results. Civale and Brown ended up looking decent in mop-up duty, but a capital letters Bullpen Game coming off how hard the pen was worked in the Padres series, given how I only trust about three guys (Palencia/Kittredge/Keller), and even then…

At least at the end of the day, blowout or not it only counts as 0-1 in the standings for the series. Jackson Chourio left the game with a hamstring injury, which may be a re-aggravation of the injury that caused him to miss the entire month of August. There is no word yet if it will knock him out for the rest of the series, but even if he’s diminished that may help the Cubs the rest of the way.

169 COMMENTS

  1. Boyd only threw 58 pitches in his last start so I’d probably have made the same decision. The Cubs don’t exactly have a lot of quality starters to choose from right now.

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  14. Based on the roster the Cubs set for this series, the correct starter for Game 1 was Ben Brown, but I don’t think there’s a manager in baseball who would have had the balls to start Ben Brown in Game 1. If you start Matthew Boyd and it doesn’t go well, people can only get so mad about it. If you start Ben Brown and it backfires, people will storm your house with literal torches and literal pitchforks.

    However, had he started Ben Brown (or Soroka or Civale), Counsell would have given Boyd and Shota two additional days of rest each. I suspect Brown had been converting his approach to more of a bullpen mode, so it probably wouldn’t have been any longer of an outing than it was. As it is, Boyd could start Game 3 on Wednesday no problem, so the theories on what should have happened are pretty much all rendered moot by the reality that the Cubs were probably going to need to score at least 5 to win Game 1 and they did not.

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  29. I was going to predict the Cubs score 2 runs tonight, but now that Turner is leading off I’m going to still go with 2 runs scored. Hoping for a shutout from Cubs pitchers.

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  35. To-day’s full base ball squadron

    1B Turner/Busch
    2B Hoerner
    DH Tucker
    RF Suzuki
    LF Happ
    C Kelly
    CF PCA
    SS Swandong
    3B Shaw

    SP Shota

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  70. Bleh, even with the off days I still feel better with Shota for another inning or two than the bullpen guys who will pick up the slack.

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  76. That might do it for the Cubs tonight…but let’s see what happens

    …in bed though, probably turning this off after the Cubs bat this coming inning if nothing happens

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  94. Somehow I missed that Chourio left late in game 2, apparently his hamstring injury flared up again, and he’s a game-time decision today. Though this maybe another smoke screen by the Brewers (dying laughing).

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  95. To-day’s base ball squadron

    1B Busch
    2B Hoerner
    DH Tucker
    RF Suzuki
    LF Happ
    C Kelly
    CF PCA
    SS Swandong
    3B Shaw

    SP Taillon

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  99. Beers base ball squadron

    DH Yelich
    LF Chourio
    2B Turang
    C Contreras
    RF Frelick
    3B Durbin
    1B Bauers
    CF Lockridge
    SS Ortiz

    SP Priester

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  155. Forgot about Keller, but as worried while driving back that this might be a Ben Brown, closer situation (dying laughing)

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