Man, I thought the Cubs were dead. These guys failed miserably in both games in Milwaukee, then nearly lost Game 3 after taking a 4-1 lead in the first inning.
Game 4 started the same way for Chicago, with Ian Happ hitting a three-run homer in the first inning, only this time they didn’t let up. Matthew Boyd threw a breaking ball around Milwaukee’s bat and went 4 2/3 scoreless innings, and the Cubs, rather than relying on their first-inning output like they did in Game 3, put up a fence in the bottom of the inning to pull the final score to 6-0. Milwaukee’s decisive Game 5 awaits.
As a team, the Brewers have a lot going for them. Their equal lineup is eight deep and even gets key contributions from the likes of Jake Bowles. They have a bunch of repeaters with stupid stuff on them. They are one of the better defensive teams in the National League and the best running back team. They’re like a triple-option football team; so versatile and fundamentally sound, they’ll put you to sleep while rushing for 300 yards at you.
What the Brewers lack is a plethora of knockout starting pitchers. Brandon Woodruff is injured again. Robert Gasser is still crafty in the operating room. Jacob Misiorovski and Tobias Myers angrily stormed into the rotation before being in the bullpen and out of the roster, respectively.
Milwaukee’s big G guy is Freddy Peralta, who ranks third in opponent batting average and eighth in strikeout rate among qualified starters this year. In Game 1, Peralta allowed four hits and struck out nine in 5 2/3 innings. The contribution went relatively unappreciated, as the Brewers burned Boyd for six runs on short rest in the first game.
But Peralta is someone the Brewers should be able to rely on with quality and at least a little bit of length. He’s the guy they want on the ball in their NFC bid.
Unfortunately, Peralta lost his bearings when the flag dropped and he paid the price. He gave up a curveball to Nico Hoerner and luckily ended up with a single. Then he walked Kyle Tucker without getting anywhere near the strike zone. Seiya Suzuki rescued Peralta by chasing down a fastball at eye level, but then Peralta’s luck ran out.
Ian Happ isn’t going to hit 120 mph exit velocity or hit the ball 480 feet. But if you keep the fastball in the middle, he can hit it.
A three-run first-inning homer off the opponent’s ace feels like a knockout. But you can’t win a game in the first inning; Happ’s home run only raised Chicago’s odds to 79.3 percent. In the previous seven NLDS games (including the Phillies-Dodgers series), the team that scored first was just 1-6, and in two of those games, the losing team led 3-0 before the end of the second inning.
If the Cubs want to convert Happ’s homer into Game 5, they need to do two things: First, prevent the Brewers from reacting immediately. Secondly, expand the lead.
Boyd had rowed in previous starts, but he made big strides in his fourth race. He mixed five pitches in 67 pitches and produced 10 balls in 31 swings. Four of those came against sliders, and Boyd failed to throw the ball into the strike zone in just one of his seven attempts.
Obviously, it’s not a slider, but Boyd is throwing garbage all over the place from his low left arm slot. Even Christian Yelich was confused by the sinker in his hands.
The Brewers controlled considerable traffic on the bases, drawing three walks and two hits from Boyd. They had at least one baserunner in five of the first six innings. But nothing was conveyed.
In Game 3, the Cubs let the Brewers roam the field and watched them slowly chip away at the lead to one. When Jackson Chourio loaded the bases in the eighth, I was sure the Brewers were going to win.
Cubs manager Craig Counsell carefully held on to a 3-0 lead. When Boyd ran into his first real trouble in the fifth inning, he got the southpaw to face Yelich one last time. He then brought in Daniel Palencia, a productive reliever who accounted for half of Chicago’s 44 regular-season saves, to retire right-hander Jolio.
Still, the Brewers needed just one hit to tie the game at that point. A 3-0 lead wasn’t as safe as it seemed.
The Cubs kept passing up opportunities to extend their lead. The two-in, two-out situation in the second game was meaningless. The Cubs then loaded the bases with one out. 4 and no. There were five batters in the fifth inning; Suzuki struck out again on a pitch well away from the zone. Happ hit a hard line drive that would have been a bases-clearing double if it had hit 10 degrees, but Blake Perkins easily made the inning-ending catch.
Matt Shaw finally broke the spell in the bottom of the sixth, bouncing Aaron Ashby’s curve ball off his shoelaces into center field for an RBI single, but the Cubs trapped Shaw and Dansby Swanson to keep the game down to just one possession.
But the Cubs kept going. A beleaguered Tucker hit his first postseason home run since Game 1 of the 2022 World Series in the bottom of the seventh inning. The Cubs almost blew the dam completely.
With the Suzuki ahead, Happ climbed aboard Gasser’s suspended sweeper and launched it 378 feet at 107.2 mph. Obviously he was a little lower, but even so, it was about a foot away from landing in the idiot basket in front of the left-center field fence, not Perkins’ glove. Happ will no doubt be pleased with his three RBIs as they clinched a win, but he drove in at least eight runs on the night.
The next batter, Carson Kelly, was on the wrong side not once but twice on single-batt replays. First, he launched a fly ball toward Waveland Drive that replay determined left the park on the wrong side of the left-field foul pole. Two pitches later, Kelly nearly knocked down a grounder, but the out call stood.
It looked like the Cubs might be on their way when Gasser walked Pete Crowe-Armstrong to score Swanson with two outs – walking PCA is never a good sign for a pitcher – but the Cubs once again put runners in trouble. Not to worry — Michael Busch added another victory with a solo home run in the bottom of the eighth inning.
By now, the ratio of outs remaining to run lead has been getting smaller and smaller, and the spicy ends of Chicago’s bullpen have taken control. After Palencia’s four outs, Drew Pomerantz pitched a clean inning with two strikeouts, and Brad Keller — who had eliminated an eighth-inning threat the night before — erased a walk with a double. Eventually, the lead was enough to be entrusted to Caleb Thielba, leaving Andrew Kittredge free to attack in the decisive fifth game with two days of rest.
The Cubs, who looked like underdogs in their first two games, are heading back down I-94 for a chance to make their first NLCS appearance since 2017. Down the road, outside of Racine, there’s a Woodman’s supermarket that has the best selection of cheese curds I’ve ever seen in one place. The Cubs should stop for a bite to eat on the drive over. They earned it.
