2024 Cubs Heroes and Goats: Game 61

Regardless of whether I’m watching a game, listening to it or just following the flow of it on my phone, I’ll start tumbling my storyline. I’m generally going to let Al talk about the blow by blow. He gives us a recap every morning that gives an effective blow by blow and there’s not much I can do to add to that. So I’m always looking to contextualize the game. What is the bigger picture?

I think it’s pretty clear that Tuesday night’s story was going to be about a new low for this team. An ugly loss to the worst team in baseball is, without a doubt, a new low for this team. A once promising season is going up in flames in front of our eyes. Does a come from behind change that? I don’t think we can know.

Now we have to watch. One of my least favorite colorful phrases is the dead cat bounce. I don’t even want to know the origin of the phrase. And if you hang around sports long enough you are going to hear it and then you are going to recognize it. I guess very much like Schrödinger, we are now wondering about a cat. In this instance, is this still a team on the way down?

Is this a case of a bad team and a worse team and the worse team snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory? I feel for the young man who was picked off second base in his major league debut. At least being a member of the White Sox means that means he’ll probably get an opportunity to play. But that’s an awfully inauspicious start to whatever his career will be. But what an iconic White Sox moment to encapsulate things going on over on the South Side. I seriously do not know if I could do this job over there.

Wouldn’t it be great if the cat is still alive? That is, wouldn’t it be great if this team scraped a new low mid game and then bounced off of it and won? If you follow stocks and markets, the analysts will talk not only about end of day highs and lows, but also intraday highs and lows. I’d love it if the season low was the game when the Cubs were losing 5-0 to the White Sox. Comebacks are fun. There’s no question that the ineptitude of the team in the other dugout helped this comeback. But how many times through the years have we seen another team seemingly trying to lose and the Cubs not taking advantage of it?

It’s been more than a month now that the offense and the starting pitching haven’t produced concurrently. As presently constituted, this team isn’t going to be rubbing shoulders with the Braves or Dodgers. I thought maybe the Brewers would be a mortal team this year and there would be competition there. It hasn’t looked that way through two plus months of the season. But after that, competition is wide open. If this team could get a sustained stretch with its offense and starting pitching consistently producing, this team has enough talent to be a playoff team, even with a suspect bullpen.

The talent level of this offense is high enough to support a pretty good starting rotation and be leading somewhere between half and two thirds of the time when the game reaches the late innings. Then it would just be a matter of seeing how many games the bullpen could cobble together and hold the line on. Interestingly, Saturday and now Tuesday we’ve seen similar storylines. The starting pitching wasn’t bad, marred by a costly error. But the offense was good and pulled it out. So maybe the first bounce happened on Saturday and then there was a second bounce Tuesday.

All I know is that it would be like manna from the heavens if the Cubs could put a couple of runs on the board early tonight and cruise to an easy victory. Three wins in four games, even against two other teams that have struggled here in 2024, would be nice to have in your pocket as you head back out on the road.

Let’s find three stars. That’s always a little easier in a 7-6 come-from-behind victory. Before I even go to the box score, I know there are going to be several choices.

1. All too many people were wishing to get rid of Ian Happ while he was struggling. He is on a tear right now. Three more hits last night, two runs driven in, two runs scored. A pair of doubles. The runs driven in were the tying and winning runs. There have now been six Cubs WPA game scores over .500 and Ian has three of them. He missed picking one up in May but had one in March and April and now June.
2. I see you, Luke Little. Pitcher wins don’t mean much, particularly reliever wins don’t. But I have no complaints that the win landed with the one Cub reliever who had a clean inning. The Cubs didn’t use him over the weekend after a couple of rough outings against the Brewers. But even with those two rough ones, since Luke was first recalled on May 15, Luke has made nine appearances, throwing 8⅓ innings, and allowing no hits. He has a 2.16 ERA over that stretch that shows as a FIP of 2.16. That’s gonna play. He’s fairly unhittable. If he can move from wild to effectively wild, the Cubs have a dominant reliever.
3. This will be controversial with the costly error, but I’m slotting Christopher Morel here. I’m one of dozens, if not hundreds, of voices around Cubs-nation that is watching the peripheral numbers for him and begging patience. He’s not only been unlucky in the early going, but by some measures, the most unlucky player in baseball! Is it maybe starting to turn? Five games is such a small sample that it’s probably meaningless. But over the last five, Christopher is 5-for-20 with two homers and a line of .313/.450/.688 (wRC+ 221). Obviously, that’s a pretty favorable slice for Christopher and he almost certainly can’t sustain that kind of production over any extended period of times. But the peripherals tell us that if he can get any reasonable BABIP, his numbers can get gaudy in a hurry. And a player with his blend of speed and power, he should if anything run hot on BABIP.

Game 61, June 4: Cubs 7, White Sox 6 (30-31)

Fangraphs

Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.

THREE HEROES:

• Superhero: Ian Happ (.512). 3-4, 2 2B, 2 RBI, 2 R

*Fifth largest WPA game score of the year and Ian has three of the top five.

• Hero: Patrick Wisdom (.279). 1-2, HR, 2 RBI, R
• Sidekick: Christopher Morel (.188). 2-4, HR, 2 RBI, 2 R

THREE GOATS:

• Billy Goat: Shota Imanaga (-.260). 4⅓ IP, 20 batters, 7 H, 5 R, ER, 6 K
• Goat: Hayden Wesneski (-.105). IP, 4 batters, H, R
• Kid: Seiya Suzuki (-.105). 0-4

WPA Play of the Game: No question on this one. Ian Happ’s eighth-inning two-run double flipped a one-run deficit to a one-run lead that ended up being the margin of victory. (.475)

*White Sox Play of the Game: Luis Robert Jr.’s two-out, seventh-inning homer off of Hayden Wesneski. (.219)

Cubs Player of the Game:

Sunday’s Winner: Cody Bellinger first with 104 votes, Kyle Hendricks second with 22.

Rizzo Award Cumulative 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.

• Ben Brown +11
• Javier Assad +10.5
• Jameson Taillon/Shōta Imanaga +9
• Mark Leiter Jr./Michael Busch +6
• Matt Mervis/Christopher Morel -6
• Miguel Amaya -8
• Adbert Alzolay -10
• Kyle Hendricks -19

*Imanaga drops down to third place and Morel nudges up to tied for fourth from last.

Up Next: Jameson Taillon (3-2, 2.84) takes the ball in the finale of this brief series. 31-year-old Erick Fedde (4-1, 3.12) is a former first-round pick (18th overall) of the Nationals. Fedde has been one of the few bright spots for the Sox. He’s on a relatively friendly contract through next season, so it’ll be interesting to see if they prefer having at least one pitcher giving them competitive starts or flipping that deal for a couple of prospects. For some teams, picking him up for 10+ starts this year and perhaps 30+ next year will be appealing.