NEWSLETTER
West Coast trips are bad enough with their late-night first pitches and near-midnight final outs. We don’t need historically bad losses on top. But that’s just what last night was, as the Chicago Cubs dropped the series opener by a final score of 9-8 despite leading 8-0 more than half-way through the game.
And when I say historically bad loss, I’m not exaggerating.
It’s just an incredibly depressing and embarrassing display, when your win expectancy literally reaches 99.4% half-way through the game. I mean really think about how bad it has to go for those odds to flip.
And that’s the part that no one seems to be talking about. It’s not like this was just a super-early 8-0 lead that gave the Padres plenty of time to come back. This was taken into the SIXTH inning. That’s less than half the game remaining for them to chip away, and they didn’t even need the bottom of the ninth. The Padres erased an 8-0 deficit in three innings of work. Just brutal.
In case you missed what actually happened, I’ll do the brief version of how the wheels fell off (I don’t have the stomach to get into it much more than that):
Although the personnel and actual performance of the Cubs bullpen is the bigger problem here, I do want to point out that every single reliever was brought into someone else’s mess. Cuas came in mid-inning for Assad, Little came in mid-inning for Cuas, Neris for Little, and Alzolay for Neris. That’s not why each or any of them failed, but we’ve all seen enough baseball to know that can get into a guy’s head.
Here’s Craig Counsell after last night’s loss:
And while we’re at it, let’s not let the defense, which was sloppy, and offense, which went completely silent, off the hook. After plating 8 runs on 7 hits and 6 walks in their first 6.0 innings of work, the Cubs managed just one hit – a Mike Tauchman single – from the 7th inning on. You can’t just disappear like that. Not when your defense is also failing.
And since this is apparently the place to air our grievances, let me also point out another thing: Garrett Cooper had to come in off the bench to face 100 MPH fastballs from Ranger Suarez with two outs in the ninth and the Cubs down one, because Christopher Morel had already been subbed out in favor of Nick Madrigal for defense. And while defensive replacements are smart and common in baseball, it’s just another reminder of how important it is for Morel to improve his defense at third base. Sometimes, your bullpen is going to blow a lead and it would’ve been nice to have Morel’s bat in there instead of Madrigal (or Cooper, who’d been sitting all game) at the end of the night.
Ugh. Okay, just an ugly, ugly loss from the Cubs and I want to move on from it. Of course, because of the injuries in the rotation and early over-use of the bullpen, the effects of this game will linger into today’s roster moves and eventual rematch against the Padres at 9:05pm CT. Here’s more on what to expect on the pitching side from Brett.
