I’m not going to play armchair psychologist about the state of the team after back-to-back blown leads and walk-off losses, to say nothing of the ongoing inability to win on the road.
Instead, I just want to share some of the post-game quotes from the club. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to feel very chill and confident, but like Kris Bryant says, how do you even react to such a situation:
Bryant on how to respond to back-to-back gut-check losses like this:
"I don't even remember it [happening] in my whole baseball playing career. I don't know how to respond to it. It's new to me. It's new to most of us. You've just got to keep playing."
— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubCub) August 17, 2019
Bryant: “We got to keep going. I don’t know what else to say.”
— Mark Gonzales (@MDGonzales) August 17, 2019
Maddon on the 9th pic.twitter.com/vaIdmRgxo0
— Mark Gonzales (@MDGonzales) August 17, 2019
Kintzler on if he was rusty: Maybe, don’t know. They put up some good ABs. Just got tired I think, legs got a little wobbly. You can simulate everything you want all the time, but until you’re actually in it… They had some great ABs, they battled, battled & then GB thru the hole
— Sahadev Sharma (@sahadevsharma) August 17, 2019
Hendricks: “We got to stick with it.” pic.twitter.com/iR14hg1YaW
— Mark Gonzales (@MDGonzales) August 17, 2019
In the end, who knows what that clubhouse is like right now. How could they possibly be positive and confident (on the road) right now? And yet somehow they’ve gotta figure out a way not only to get past these two brutal losses, but also to not believe there is some inherent problem with them on the road. It’s one thing for us fans to feel like, yeah, this is their 2019 thing. It’s quite another thing for any of the players to quietly buy into it under the surface.
On that topic, here’s Joe Maddon (Cubs.com): “It takes a fundamental, consistent effort nightly. That’s what it takes. There’s no magic potion here. It comes down to, we haven’t hit as well and we haven’t pitched as well. Why? I can’t give you reasons why. I don’t know why.”
I don’t have a grand conclusion here, and, like I said, I’m not going to pretend I can sum up the vibe in the clubhouse. But here’s the stuff the team was saying after the loss, and I can at least confirm I am not really comforted by any of it. Maybe there’s nothing they *could* say that would comfort me. But, yeah, this didn’t do it.
Maybe they’re just gonna need to luck into some wins on the road at this point to help try to turn the worm, because I’m not sure there’s an internal “fix” to this problem.