2020 Cubs Heroes and Goats: Game 25

Well, that wasn’t much fun. I mean, unless you are a closet White Sox fan. The Cubs were completely wiped out on Friday night. I’ll say this, if the Cubs are going to get wiped out, I always prefer it to be on a Friday or Saturday. I had the game turned off before Jon Lester even left the game. I enjoyed a few beers and spent slightly more quality time with my family on a Friday night. I hope many of you had the same privilege and didn’t waste too much time with that game.

I kind of feared that one was coming. A battle of two veteran left-handed starters. But one team has been absolutely crushing lefties and the other has struggled mightily against them. The Cardinals just got done showing it very obviously over five games that if you can just keep coming up with left-handed pitchers to throw at the Cubs, they aren’t likely to do much about it.

Until we have a healthy Kris Bryant and Javier Baez turns around his horrible start to the season, this may be the case. Guys like Bryant and Baez and Willson Contreras need to do real damage against left-handed pitching, or the Cubs are just too beatable. Especially considering that right-handed velocity works more often than not against the Cubs as well.

One fortunate thing to this weird season is that it isn’t particularly easy to just load up on left-handed pitching to match-up with the Cubs. So at least this is not as easily exploitable if your options aren’t already in house.

With that, we turn our attention to yesterday’s game as we look at what WPA had to say about Heroes and Goats. As always the Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA (Win Probability Added) and are not in any way subjective. Many days WPA will not tell the story of what happened, but often it can give at least a glimpse to who rose to the occasion in a high leverage moment or who didn’t get the job done in that moment. With that, let’s get to the results.

Game 25, August 21: White Sox 10, Cubs 1 (16-9)

THREE HEROES:

• Superhero: Albert Almora Jr. (.009). Albert had a pair of singles in three at bats.
• Hero: Dan Winkler (.003). Winkler faced four batters and retired them all.
• Sidekick: Jason Kipnis (.002). Kipnis drew a walk to load the bases with two outs in the eighth inning.

THREE GOATS:

• Billy Goat: Jon Lester (-.345). Lester got lit up. He allowed nine hits and eight runs in just 3⅔ innings. He didn’t walk anyone and struck out three.
• Goat: Javier Baez (-.030). Javy had a single in three at bats.
• Kid: Willson Contreras (-.029). Contreras was hitless in two at bats before leaving the game early.

WPA Play of the Game: Luis Robert got the scoring going with a two-run homer in the second inning. (.176)

*Cubs Play of the Game: With a runner on first in the second inning, Jon Lester fanned Edwin Encarnacion.

Heroes and Goats Cumulative Standings: (Top/Bottom 3)

• Ian Happ and Yu Darvish 10
• Kyle Hendricks and Jason Kipnis 9
• Javier Baez and Kyle Ryan -6
• Victor Caratini -6.5
• Kris Bryant -10

Up Next: Game two of the three-game set. Kyle Hendricks makes the start for the Cubs. He’ll look to stop the red-hot White Sox bats. Reynaldo Lopez gets the start for the White Sox. The odds-makers have favored the Cubs in this one. Let’s hope they’ve got it right.