Cubs Control the Narrative in Decisive Game 3 NL Wild Card Win Over Padres

They say that in order to thrive in stressful and uncertain times, the key is to focus on the things you control. And who are “they” exactly? Mostly people who traffic in self-help cliches on the internet. But cliches are cliches for a reason. They’re rooted in some measure of truth. And in a decisive Game 3 on Thursday, the NL Wild Card Series between the Cubs and Padres was ultimately decided by control — in nearly every sense of the word. The type of control that refers to whether a pitcher can find the strike zone, the type of control a manager exercises over bullpen usage, and the type of control exerted over batted ball outcomes when lockdown defense becomes a critical component of a team’s identity.

In a 3-1 Cubs victory over the Padres, neither team looked dominant, but Chicago dominated the variables within its control, while San Diego seemed to be pulling blocks from a Jenga tower on an inning-by-inning basis and hoping to stay upright until its offense could break through with a few runs.

But things got wobbly early for the Padres. Coming off his age-38 season, Yu Darvish got the start for San Diego. He made multiple trips to the IL during the regular season with elbow inflammation, and despite Darvish’s return to the active roster, in his postgame comments to the media, Padres manager Mike Shildt implied the pitcher was never fully healthy. As a result, Darvish posted a career-low strikeout rate to go along with a career-high home run rate and ERA, while totaling just 72 innings pitched.

On Thursday, Darvish opened up the first inning leaving fastballs over the heart of the plate and missing the zone badly with his breaking pitches. He did not seem in control. He made it through the first inning despite allowing a leadoff single to Michael Busch on a middle-middle cutter. Nico Hoerner rolled over a low slider. He snuck a couple of fastballs past Ian Happ for a strikeout, and then catcher Freddy Fermin cut down Busch attempting to steal second.

In the second inning, Darvish allowed back-to-back hits to start the frame. Then with his four-seamer leaking over the plate and his cutter failing to miss bats regardless of location, he opted for sinkers against Cubs catcher Carson Kelly. The first missed low, the second induced a swinging strike despite missing inside, and the third rode even further inside, hitting Kelly and loading the bases for Pete Crow-Armstrong. After how poorly things went with the sinker, Darvish went back to his curveball, but spiked it in the dirt. In the hole 1-0, and likely looking for a strike, he attempted another four-seamer, which again caught too much of the plate. Crow-Armstrong dropped the pitch into center field for a single, plating a run in the process.

With Darvish lacking both control and command of his pitches, Shildt attempted to regain control and made a call to the bullpen. But when Jeremiah Estrada entered with no outs and the bases loaded to face shortstop Dansby Swanson, he opted to stay away from his 97-mph fastball, and instead threw Swanson five sliders and two splitters. Swanson swung at the only three offerings in the zone, fouling off a slider and a splitter. The other four pitches missed badly, so Estrada walked in a run on the first batter he faced. Given the situation, choosing to spam sliders and splitters cedes too much control, even if those pitches are designed to generate whiffs outside the zone. Swanson remained disciplined, controlling what he could control and swinging only when needed.

Estrada struck out the next batter on three straight fastballs and wound up throwing two innings without allowing any more runs. Shildt then got an inning each from Michael King, Wandy Peralta, Robert Suarez, Adrian Morejon, and David Morgan. And when rattled off like that, it sounds as though Shildt executed a nice, tidy, controlled game plan. The Cubs only scored once more, but despite the results, Shildt’s bullpen management featured difficult-to-follow logic and unnecessary risks.

For instance, why was Estrada first out of the bullpen, when his performance in August and September had dropped off significantly relative to his numbers in April and May (a 5.19 ERA compared to a 2.49 ERA)? Why did he stay in the game for two innings when he’d only been asked to get six outs once all season? If King, a former reliever, was going to be available out of the bullpen anyway, why not let him provide some length rather than Estrada? And when King did eventually enter the game, why only use him for one inning? There’s an argument for wanting to secure a favorable matchup for the left-handed Peralta with several of Chicago’s lefty hitters due up, but why not let Peralta catch Busch, the switch-hitting Happ, and Kyle Tucker the next time through the order? As it played out, Busch next came to the plate in the seventh with Suarez on the mound to start a second inning of work. Like Estrada, Suarez has not been called upon to pitch more than one inning very often. He’s only needed to sit down and then get back out there and warm up again four times this year. And in this instance, Suarez was sitting for a while. The top half of the inning included both a Cubs pitching change and a challenge attempting to overturn a successful steal of second by Xander Bogaerts. When Suarez finally did toe the rubber against Busch, he threw four straight changeups, then piped a fastball down the middle that Busch deposited in the right field bleachers to extend Chicago’s lead to 3-0.

Surely Shildt entered an elimination game with a backup plan for this year’s less reliable version of Darvish, and he certainly has more detailed information on the status of his pitching staff than we do, but the way the game script unfolded did not give the appearance of a measured and carefully plotted deployment of pitching resources.

By contrast, Cubs manager Craig Counsell had five innings to cover with his bullpen, and his strategy was fairly straightforward to decode. But before he needed to make the call to the pen, starting pitcher Jameson Taillon — who like Darvish is currently a somewhat diminished version of his former self, but still possesses a vast arsenal of pitches to work with — navigated four scoreless innings with less-than-overwhelming stuff by strategically mixing and locating six distinct pitch types. And unlike Darvish, Taillon was able to locate his pitches well enough to control the narrative throughout his outing. Then Counsell finished out the game by setting up his best right-handed relievers to face the formidable (and righty-heavy) top of San Diego’s lineup and dropping in his left-handed relievers, or rather, his relievers who fare better against left-handed hitters, to face the pocket of lefties at the bottom of the order (Ryan O’Hearn, Gavin Sheets, and Jake Cronenworth). And though none of O’Hearn, Sheets, and Cronenworth own significant splits against left-handed pitching, Counsell’s strategy was clearly designed to play to the splits and strengths of his staff, rather than trying to contort his roster to exploit opponent weaknesses.

And Counsell’s tact worked. Right up until the top of the ninth, when reliever Brad Keller, in his second inning of work, completely lost his feel for where the baseball was going and plunked both O’Hearn and Bryce Johnson (who entered the game to play left field after Jose Iglesias pinch-hit for Sheets in the sixth) in consecutive plate appearances. But according to Counsell’s plan, that was the place in the lineup where a lefty killer is meant to enter the chat anyway, so in came Andrew Kittredge (a righty with reverse splits) to close things out for Chicago.

Though sound pitching strategy is important — and even if Darvish had gone toe-to-toe with Taillon, and Shildt had used his bullpen in a more sensical manner — none of it matters if the team doesn’t score runs. And the Padres were held scoreless until a ninth-inning home run from Jackson Merrill. But Chicago’s excellent pitching wasn’t the only reason for that. San Diego made some solid contact, the type that normally goes for a hit, only for that contact to be swallowed up by the Cubs defense. Some might call that bad batted ball luck, but I’m not sure luck had much to do with it. Rather, the Cubs purposely assembled a roster with Dansby at shortstop, Hoerner at second, and Crow-Armstrong in center.

So as the final exhibit of Chicago taking control of this decisive Game 3, let’s run through some defensive highlights.

PCA set the tone in the first inning with a sliding grab for the first out.

In the fourth, Swanson leapt to snag a line drive, couldn’t quite hold on, but managed to ignore his chain falling off and recovered in time to make the throw to first, in part, because the batter (Luis Arraez), knowing Swanson’s reputation, assumed the shortstop made the initial catch.

Then in the sixth, Swanson opened the inning with a sliding play on a grounder, and followed that up by showcasing some lightning fast footwork to start a 6-3 double play.

In the seventh, Hoerner got in on the action with a leaping grab of his own, followed by a quick-release throw to second, that didn’t succeed in doubling off Bogaerts, but remains worthy of oohs and aahs.

The Cubs now move on to face the Brewers in the Division Series starting on Saturday in Milwaukee.