Cubs Heroes and Goats: Game 9

You know, for all of the hype that surrounded this game, I'm quite disappointed that Chris Denorfia didn't actually make his Cubs debut.

(Yes, I know. Bad joke. Made many times on Friday. I didn't have anything else. Commence the pelting with rotten tomatoes. Kinda feels like ref camp Friday. And there's still two days left!)

Graphs for Game 9 (courtesy of Fangraphs):

Stats for Game 9:

Writer's Note: The daily selections of the three Heroes and three Goats are based solely on the top three and bottom three WPA scores for the game. The selections are not based on my subjective opinion.

THE THREE HEROES:

• Superhero - Dexter Fowler (.204). Wins the "table-setter" award for the game with his ground-rule double in the seventh and then his single and stolen base in the ninth.
• Hero - Jonathan Herrera (.185). He owes James Shields a huge fruit basket for this one. But credit where credit is due: It did seem like he was completely in Shields' head when he was on third base.
• Sidekick - Anthony Rizzo (.119). Primarily a result of his double in the fifth to extend the lead to two.

THE THREE GOATS:

• Billy Goat - Brian Schlitter (-.507). I admit; it pretty much stinks when you have try to strike out the same guy twice. Heck, even the Padres announcers knew that you struck out Wil Myers. But there were about a million better places (okay, maybe not that many) that the next pitch could have been thrown than that.
• Goat - Kris Bryant (-.186). Welcome to the bigs, Kris! Very slick glovework out there. I'm sure the bat will follow soon.
• Kid - Jorge Soler (-.103). His run-scoring single in the fifth was a huge positive, but it was negated by everything else in the game including the game-ending grounder to third.

RANKINGS THROUGH GAME 9 ("x" indicates player on disabled list):

Fowler and Rizzo continue their podium-standing ways, while Herrera picks up his second positive tally in a row.