Poof. It’s over.
Despite winning 95 regular season games, the Chicago Cubs’ 2018 season ends with a largely ugly, long, and joyless Wild Card Game. Congrats to the Colorado Rockies. I hope you stomp the Brewers.
The Cubs went down 1-0 in the first inning, and the funeral processed from there. The bats were eager but ineffectual throughout the night. The Cubs threatened very few times through 13 innings of plate appearances, and almost all of those came via gifts from the Rockies.
The bats let the Cubs down tonight, as they did too often this season.
They did score one run in the 8th inning to tie things up and drive the many extra innings of pain that followed, but for the most part, it was everything you’ve come to know and hate over the past month. There are excuses for what the offense has become, without question. But I don’t much care to offer them tonight.
Jon Lester gave up some hard contact, but, by and large, was fantastic tonight. He did what he does when the moment calls for it, and it freaking sucks all the more that it didn’t matter. Ditto the pitchers that followed him, because they were basically all very good tonight (even Kyle Hendricks, who gave up the game-winning hit, wasn’t getting rocked – balls just found holes, as they eventually do).
It also sucks that the Cubs got SO MANY good breaks in this one – help from the ivy, a dropped pop up, catcher’s interference, an extremely surprising review decision, a check swing that totally wasn’t – and it didn’t matter. Like I said this morning: good fortune or no, sometimes you’ve gotta do it yourselves. The Cubs didn’t.
We’ll have more to say about this game tomorrow, I’m sure, and then the season after that. But it’s over. And I feel down. So it is with baseball sometimes.