Where do you go after a weekend series sweep like that, at a moment like this?
I think it would be very hard to have been paying attention this season and not seen this weekend’s series sweep in Arizona as an inflection point. That doesn’t mean the season is over, but it does mean that, having dropped from 4.0 games up in the SECOND Wild Card spot to ENTIRELY OUT of the playoffs in just 10 games, things are going to be different in some way starting tomorrow than they were a couple weeks ago.
The Cubs are now trying to get back into a Wild Card spot, and they are definitely not realistically even dreaming of the division. It’s just a really different place than the one they were in only a couple weeks ago.
Maybe the Cubs get on another heater against bad teams and force their way back into the playoffs. The last really major inflection point, of course, was another sweep out west: the one in Anaheim in June that felt like the beginning of the descent toward a sell-off. The Cubs got hot from there, and just wouldn’t stop. At least until the last couple weeks. It can happen. There’s still time. All that stuff.
But if it doesn’t happen, if this time, the descent continues, I think we’ll look back and know that the road trip to Colorado and Arizona, after losing three of four at home against the Diamondbacks, was the stretch that sunk it. All we’ve got left is hope that the story isn’t written quite yet, and the version we end up reading after the regular season is how the Cubs took a couple sweeps out west and used them to turn things around. I’d like to read that story. Heck, I’d like to write it.
As David Ross might say, baseball is not a tryhard league. It is all about the results.
And if the Cubs miss the playoffs, nothing else will be remembered about the 2023 season.
Only this late collapse, writes @PJ_Mooney.https://t.co/ux27Id45Um— The Athletic MLB (@TheAthleticMLB) September 18, 2023
All 3 #DBacks SPs this weekend increased four-seam usage versus the #Cubs.
Ryne Nelson 60% four-seam tonight vs 53% season average
Zach Davies 43% vs 30%
Brandon Pfaadt 49% vs 42%
Cubs hold the 2nd lowest xwOBA in baseball versus right-handed four-seamers, lowest xSLG.— Lance Brozdowski (@LanceBroz) September 18, 2023
there's a bit of similarity between the chicago cubs and seattle mariners and the evolution of their playoff chances pic.twitter.com/Akm0qQc0LD— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) September 18, 2023
NEW: Brewers stadium funding breakdown to keep team in MKE.
$700 million package:
-$400 million from state
-$200 million from city, county
-$100-125 million from Brewers https://t.co/rDdf9zi2p7— Emilee Fannon (@Emilee_Fannon) September 15, 2023
