By the time Anthony Rizzo stepped up to the plate with nobody on and two outs in the bottom of the sixth inning earlier today, Nationals Starter Jeremy Hellickson was one batter away from completing his sixth hitless inning of work at Wrigley Field.
Worse, having used just 68 pitches to that point, Hellickson’s ability to stay in the game was anything but in question. That is, until Rizzo did his thing.
Starting with an 0-0 count (because, you know, those are the rules of baseball), Rizzo worked an extremely impressive 13-pitch walk, driving Hellickson’s pitch count way up to 81 while completely unraveling everything he knows to be true about reality and life and love and happiness.
It was great, check it out:
If you're gonna fill the role of leadoff hitter, you have to see plenty of pitches.
Anthony Rizzo – aka the Greatest Leadoff Hitter of All-Time – knows a thing or two about that with his 13-pitch plate appearance.
Watch the rest of this wild game here: https://t.co/CaQ3FJzL8I pic.twitter.com/TfjltWCrKB
— Cubs Talk (@NBCSCubs) August 10, 2018
After that, both Javy Baez and Ben Zobrist walked on eight straight pitches to load the bases, and Hellickson was pulled, for the biggest moment of the game: Jason Heyward’s no-hitter breaking, game-tying, two-RBI single.
Take another look at this insanely important moment from the Cubs latest win:
tie game! pic.twitter.com/wTozdT4WeS
— Brett (@Cubbieblue97) August 10, 2018
BOOM. No-hitter: over. Shutout: over. Lead: done.
The Nationals had brought in the lefty Sammy Solis because, for his career, lefties have had just a .294 wOBA against him and Jason Heyward, a lefty, was also a lefty (and, of course, Heyward shares a career .294 wOBA against fellow southpaws).
But just like his big-time grand slam off a lefty earlier this season, Heyward came through for the Cubs yet again with a 106 MPH line drive to right center field, scoring Javy Baez and Rizzo from second and third.
As you can pretty clearly see by FanGraphs win probability scoreboard, Heyward’s hit was a huge turning point in the game:
According to this, the Cubs chances of winning after that hit jumped from 30.6% all the way up to 57.6%. That’s a huge swing in the odds. And eventually, of course, the Cubs would go onto win.