Hey, I did say in my Up Next for this game that I liked the pitching matchup. I think I probably envisioned a stronger performance from Shōta Imanaga. I’ll hat tip Aaron Civale for his performance in this one, saving a lot of bullpen and also being very effective. I understand and respect that he’ll seek out an opportunity to continue starting somewhere next year. That’s surely the right move, but if he ever wanted to embrace a swing man role for the Cubs organization, I’d welcome it.
I always love when I can physically feel my opinion on something changing as I’m watching a game. For so many years, I was so much about the sanctity of 162 games and for trying to make as many of those games be complete games as possible. Part of the experience of baseball are the milestones, be it single season or career. And also, they let an extended stretch of history be marred by steroids. Numbers were shattered. Hitting records fell to the way side. Players extended their careers and put up historic numbers.
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Now in this new era, starters throw a continually dwindling number of innings. The roster shuffle has dozens of players in and out of roster spots. There appears to be an increase of the incidence of what I’ll call soft injured list time. A kind of soft fraud type of manipulating roster limits and trying to save bullets for the postseason. More and more every pitch is a max effort pitch and so almost all counting pitching stats are drifting towards unbreakable.
With this era of max effort, it is clearly a waste of precious ammunition to have a guy throwing batting practice fastballs while they run out the game. Well, at least having an ordinary pitcher do so. Now, we see a larger and larger number of position players pitching. And, they also don’t want those guys getting hurt, so we aren’t seeing guys who were pitchers at some point earlier in their career throwing some reasonable effort pitches at 60-75 miles per hour. Nope, we’re seeing the kind of pitches you’d see thrown to your seven-year-old child’s team seeing live pitching for the first time.
This has now contorted to the point where Carson Kelly was called on to throw an inning of relief, rather than tax anyone to try to protect a 17-run lead. I don’t think before the last year or two I could remember a position player getting action on a team winning by a large margin.
Just like that, I wouldn’t be disappointed if a team were allowed to throw up the white flag and put an end to the game. I don’t think there is an urgent need to do so or anything, but I have no need to ever see these late-inning situations where there is nothing vaguely competitive happening. I certainly don’t think ending a game early is any more of an abomination than the ghost runner in extra innings.
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While on the one hand, customers pay to see a whole game, also you do sometimes end one due to weather. Also, if I’d paid to see this game, I’d have probably left no later than middle of the eighth when it was clear there was nothing competitive left to happen.
For me, I find it unfortunate. The Cubs are trying to prepare themselves to try to make a deep run in the playoffs. You could feel the Mariners pulling back in the middle inning of this game and there were some pretty poor attempts at fielding that contributed to the lopsided score.
Yawn. At least it was another win. The Cubs have posted an amazing number of these one-sided games. With the outburst, the Cubs ended the night with the most runs scored in baseball, nosing ahead of the Nationals who have played one more game. They’ve also sneaked into the OPS lead for all of baseball. This has been a really special group this year. It would have been terrific if they had a healthy pitching staff. Hopefully they can pull a respectable group together from this scrap heap to try to make a playoff run.
Three Positives:
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Ian Happ had the big blow of the game, a grand slam. He had two hits, a walk, drove in five and scored two. Season line now at .218/.327/.420 (109 wRC+)
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Pedro Ramirez did take advantage of silly baseball, but I’ll still hat tip three hits, three runs and five driven in. He did most of that damage in silly ball.
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Pete Crow-Armstrong had two hits and a walk. Stole a base, hit another homer. Drove in three and scored two. When all is said and done this is going to be the greatest season in the history of baseball’s oldest team. For all of the things the Cubs haven’t been through the years, they still have some really magnificent baseball seasons in their history and he appears headed to blow past all of them.
Game 131, August 23: Cubs 19, Mariners 2 (75-56)
Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.
THREE HEROES:
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Superhero: Ian Happ (.352). 2-4, HR, BB, 5 RBI, 2 R, DP
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Hero: Aaron Civale (.256). 4 IP, 13 BF, H, 2 K (W 1-0)
THREE GOATS:
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Billy Goat: Shōta Imanaga (-.229). 2 IP, 14 BF, 5 H, 2 BB, 2 R (1 ER), 4 K
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Kid: Carson Kelly (-.047). 1-5, RBI, R, DP
NOTE: Carson Kelly’s WPA is solely reflective of his batting and does not include his pitching. 23 of the 96 “events” in this game scored .000 WPA, including all of those while Kelly was pitching. The first of those was Seiya Suzuki’s single in the eighth. Ian Happ’s bases-loaded walk a few batters later was the last one that scored any WPA.
WPA Play of the Game: Ian Happ’s grand slam in the third inning. (.390)
Mariners Play of the Game: Josh Naylor batted with a runner on first and no outs in the third inning, the Mariners down three. He singled, ending the day of Imanaga. (.065)
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Cubs Player of the Game:
Game 130 Winner: Tyrone Taylor 16-14 over Alex Bregman (37 total votes). Apologies for not listing David Peterson, who was a valid choice.
Rizzo Award Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)
The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.
Scoreboard Watching: Phillies win (two back of Cubs). Marlins win (eight back). Dodgers win (five up). Padres win (four back). Diamondbacks win (six back). Braves win (one up) over Brewers (six up). So the Cubs gain one back on Milwaukee to end the week. One impressive weekend for the top half of the NL. Only the Cubs and Braves lost their series and the Braves lost theirs in Milwaukee (and Williamsport).
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Up Next: On to Arizona to face the Diamondbacks who I noted are six back. They are fourth in the Wild Card chase, two out of the last spot. They’ve split their last 10 games and have a +9 run differential. This one is a battle of two guys who most of us expect to be better. Kevin Gausman (6-11, 4.58) makes his fourth Cub start. He’s failed to escape the fifth in his last two. He actually beat the D-backs as a Blue Jay back in April. He allowed two runs on seven hits and a walk over six innings.
Merrill Kelly (8-11, 5.37) starts for Arizona. The eighth round pick of the Rays in 2010 (251st overall) is 1-3 with a 5.35 over his last seven, so he’s been pretty consistently bad. He’s allowed six earned runs in each of his last two starts and he hasn’t finished six innings since July 9. The Cubs beat him back in May, putting up six earned runs on eight hits and three walks in 4.1 innings. Michael Busch had two hits, including a triple, drove in four and walked in that one.
Diamondbacks relievers have thrown the fourth fewest innings and in turn have the least number of strikeouts. But even if you look at K/9, they are still 27th out of 30. They are 22nd out of 30 in WHIP. So this isn’t a great bullpen. That said, despite the low number of innings (and moderate number of wins), their bullpen is tied for the 11th most holds. They can be beat late, but are no pushover.
Let’s make it two straight wins against a pitcher having a rough year.
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