Jake Arrieta had loaded the bases and walked in a run before recording his first out on the day. It portended doom.
Which turned out to be accurate, but not so much in the way you would’ve expected. Since Arrieta got out of that jam without further damage, and went on to pitch reasonably well on the day, I guess the doom that first inning suggested had to do with the bats’ inability to hit Brandon Woodruff (and the bullpen shenanigans later on). Hey, that’s gonna continue to be true for most teams this year facing Woodruff, but it remains frustrating to see it happen to the Cubs for the third time this year already. The Brewers bullpen is also quite good, but again, the frustration nevertheless applies.
As for Arrieta, the guy was just stellar. How you go from that beginning to then, boom, knocking down 15 straight batters, and then getting out of a no outs, 1st and 3rd jam of your defense’s making in the 6th … the guy just has stones. And he had the stuff today.
Jason Adam had zero command in the 9th, which put the game out of reach – hammered meatball, walk, HBP, hammered meatball, hammered not-terrible-but-not-great pitch, walk, and that was it. Didn’t record a single out. Love Adam’s stuff, but that was atrocious. Not that you’d bounce him for a single outing, but it’s still worth noting that he has minor league options remaining.
Of all the relievers to come into a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam, Dillon Maples ain’t the guy you’d choose first. But in that situation – game probably already over, but still high stress with no margin for error – I liked that Maples got the call. At some point you need to start getting a little more information on the 2021 version of Maples, who’d been pitching well … in extremely low-stress situations. Did we GET much useful information this time? Eh. Probably not, since he went strikeout, HBP, walk, strikeout, groundout – a very, very Dillon Maples inning. Not really much in the way of “new.”