Today is probably going to be a strange one in the sports world, given all that happened yesterday. Like I said earlier, I intend to cover whatever happens that is relevant to baseball/the Cubs, and I remain open to the conversation about what’s appropriate here at BN and what isn’t. I read and consider your thoughts on the matter.
Can I talk about baseball now?
… and about how you can’t predict it? After saving 32 consecutive games to start his Cubs career, Wade Davis kinda blew two saves in a single game yesterday. Get two of them out of the way in a single game, right? Very clever, Mr. Davis.
In all seriousness, although it stunk to lose the game, Davis blowing ONE game this year is really not something to get riled up about. He had the perfect attitude after the game (Cubs.com): “Obviously, I wanted to win today’s game and put us in a better position than we were [before the game]. That kind of stinks. Move on from it.”
As for the decision to send Davis back out there for the 10th inning, I would have been fine with Hector Rondon, who was warming, getting another appearance there – he looked sooooo good on Friday in his first appearance back from elbow inflammation. But maybe Rondon wasn’t quite feeling it as he was warming up. We don’t know. And Davis got through the 9th pretty quickly after the homer, and he struck out Neil Walker nastily to open the 10th. A double and a homer in quick succession ended things. Eh. I don’t have a lot of second guessing there.
Otherwise, the pitching was excellent yesterday, starting with Kyle Hendricks, who had a short outing, but once again was missing bats and inducing weak contact. Dare I say that watching his starts right now looks exactly like the guy we saw for most of last year? The command is there, the movement is there, the weak contact is there, and now the velocity is basically back to where it was last year, too. Hendricks touched 90.0 mph yesterday, and sat at about 87.5 mph. That’ll play.
With Hendricks consistently looking like this in the second half, with Jose Quintana really locked in, and with Jake Arrieta looking great in his return from the hamstring injury … anyone else starting to feel good about the Cubs’ playoff rotation? At least relative to how you were feeling a few months ago? Sure, it would be nice if Jon Lester were able to figure out his command/velocity issues, but I also wouldn’t bet against him stepping it up on the biggest stage. The Cubs can’t match the Scherzer-Strasburg-Gonzalez front three of the Nationals, but they’re not that far off.
Today’s game will not sink or float the rest of the Cubs’ season, but it very well could for the Brewers, at least in the NL Central. Lose this one, and they’re six games back of the Cubs in the loss column with the Cubs having only seven games left to play. They’d need to win out AND have the Cubs lose out to avoid a tie.
Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here.
Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.
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