The Chicago Cubs lived to fight another day Wednesday, riding a terrific outing by Jake Arrieta and some late-game resolve from Wade Davis to a 3-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Chicago’s hopes in this NLCS remain slim, as they’ll have to win three more consecutively against baseball’s best team in order to make history. But they’ve at least gotten a quarter of the way there.
For the Dodgers, Wednesday was their first loss of the post-season. They’ll have Clayton Kershaw on the mound when the series resumes Thursday, which is a pretty good way to try to get over what they hope was a slight speed bump on their way to greater things.
Alex Wood makes a debut
Pitching for the first time in three weeks, and making the first post-season start of his life, Dodgers left-hander Alex Wood presented a bit of a wild card as Los Angeles looked to complete the sweep. He was excellent during the regular season, putting up a 2.72 ERA over 152.1 innings. But he also hadn’t pitched in a game since Sept. 26.
The first inning was a breeze, but the second was not as Chicago put up a pair of runs. The Cubs have scored first in each game this series, and that continued Wednesday when Wilson Contreras took a first-pitch two-seamer for a ride, crushing a solo shot off the scoreboard in left.
Then, a batter later, Javier Baez added on with a solo blast of his own, snapping an 0-for-23 post-season skid in a big way and helping the Cubs surge ahead early.
[snippet id=3638601]
The ball Baez hit was a curveball right at the bottom of the zone, a pitcher’s pitch that the Cubs second baseman was nonetheless able to drive out of the yard, leaving Wood to only shake his head. You could’ve said it was a fluke, if not for the fact Baez hit an even better pitch over the wall in the fifth inning, going down below the strike zone to get to a perfect Wood change-up and somehow muscle it into the left-field bleachers.
Wood was out of the game shortly after that, throwing only 70 pitches over his 4.2 innings. It wasn’t a perfect outing. But, really, the only pitch Wood can feel bad about is the one to Contreras. The two Baez hit were perfectly placed. As a pitcher, there’s little else you can do.
Arrieta (maybe) makes an exit
There are certainly worse guys to send to the mound in a pressure-packed, must-win game than Arrieta, the 2015 NL Cy Young winner and one of the most competitive pitchers in baseball. The fact it may have been the pending free agent’s final start as a Cub, and that his team would go home with a loss, only ratcheted up the tension.
And the 31-year-old pitched like a guy who very much did not want to go home, attacking Los Angeles hitters with his 93-m.p.h. sinker while mixing in 80-m.p.h. curveballs and 90-m.p.h. sliders behind it. He worked out of a two-on, two-out jam in the first inning and looked completely in control his first time through the order.
Cody Bellinger hit an absolute rocket off Arrieta in the third, driving a solo shot on a rope to right at 108 m.p.h. But Arrieta settled back in after that and held Los Angeles off the board through the sixth, punctuating the end of that inning with a pair of strikeouts.
Cubs manager Joe Maddon was clearly determined to ride his starter as long as he could, leaving him on the mound throughout a long, arduous seventh inning which saw Arrieta match his season-high in pitches with 111 as he walked Chris Taylor to put a couple runners on with two out.
Considering how far he’d pushed Arrieta — and what the next batter, Bellinger, had done earlier — Maddon had little choice at that juncture but to turn to his beleaguered bullpen, even as the crowd at Wrigley Field booed his walk to the mound. If that’s Arrieta’s final appearance as a Cub, he gave the fans everything they could have asked for.
Maddon brought in Brian Duensing, who did the job, getting Bellinger to chase a pitch and pop up to shallow left field.
Wade Davis turns in a gutsy performance
With six outs to go, Maddon turned to his closer, Davis, choosing to live or die with his best bullpen arm. And it didn’t start particularly well, as the right-hander left a fastball up and on the plate to the first batter he faced, Justin Turner, who launched a bomb to deep right field that brought the Dodgers within a run.
The next four batters went walk, pop out, strikeout, walk, as Davis laboured and his pitch count soared above 30. He eventually got Chase Utley to strikeout with his 34th pitch of the eighth, preserving Chicago’s one-run lead. But it was still an extremely stressful inning for Davis, especially considering there was a break of several minutes in the middle of it as Maddon vehemently argued a bizarre overturned foul-tip call and got himself thrown out of the game.
But that didn’t seem to bother Davis as he came back out for the ninth inning and struck out Austin Barnes on three pitches. The next batter, Taylor, reached on a walk which only narrowed the margin for error. But Davis got Bellinger to roll over a 2-1 fastball for a game-ending double-play.
After throwing 48 pitches over his two innings, it’s hard to imagine Davis being available to Maddon and the Cubs in Thursday’s Game 5. But there couldn’t be a Game 5 without a Cubs win in Game 4. Maddon will simply have to cross that bullpen bridge when he gets to it.
[relatedlinks]
