The Cubs wear out the A’s and sweep series with a 10-2 victory.
When I said that I thought this Cubs team would win 91 games, I was thinking of the team that spent the last three days terrorizing the A’s in Sacramento. The facility might have been a minor league one, but the performance was very much a major league team. A very good major league team. This team can be among the better teams in baseball.
It takes a village to make a legitimate contender. But, it’s hard not to see Kyle Tucker at the center of the evolution of this Cubs team. With all due respect to Cody Bellinger and the very good season that he had for the Cubs in 2023, it’s been a while since the Cubs had a player the caliber of Kyle Tucker. It’s at least since the early years of Kris Bryant since the Cubs had a hitter this good. And it’s very likely that we’ll learn that this is the best Cubs player since Sammy Sosa. Again, with due respect to Anthony Rizzo, Kyle is the best Cub left handed hitter in so long that I don’t know the comp.
That’s a lot of praise and any of you that want to dismiss that as hyperbole, I get it. We’ll let it play out over time. But at any rate, this lineup we’ve seen over the last several days is an evolved version of what we’ve seen the last couple of years. Certainly, the progression of the other players up and down the lineup is part of that evolution. But also, that progression is, at least in part, boosted by the enormous weight that Tucker is taking off of their shoulders.
The numbers are eye popping over the last five games. The homers, the hits, the walks. It’s just been an avalanche of offense. But the metric I’ve been noticing won’t get a lot of attention. Those of us who were around for the championship era remember long time poster Theo’s Spare Soul monitoring the Cubs efforts to see a lot of pitches day-to-day. That was a calling card of the team in the championship era. They just wore teams out.
You saw that again on Wednesday afternoon. The Cubs knocked the A’s starter out after only three innings. The first three A’s pitchers combined to throw more than 150 pitches. For perspective, there was a complete-game shutout this week that was only 97 pitches. It’s not hard to imagine if the game hadn’t gotten out of hand that the Cubs would have approached 200 pitches seen on Wednesday.
I first identified the game theory behind that kind of approach way back in 2003. The Cubs had a trio of very young pitchers in Kerry Wood, Carlos Zambrano and Mark Prior. Not to mention Matt Clement, their fourth starter. They all had electric stuff. But, all could be wild. Also, teams were just starting to start looking increasingly at pitch counts. Somewhere along the way, 100 pitches became a magic number. Well, if you could see 20 pitches per inning, they’d be done in five innings and you could take your chances with their bullpen.
Of course, in those days, you didn’t have bullpens that could run a fleet of guys that throw 90-100 miles per hour. So in those days, you were doing yourself a huge favor to get into the bullpen. That’s probably less true today. However, here’s the thing. Outside of maybe the Dodgers, if you persistently run pitch counts, you are going to find weak spots. You are going to find a guy who just doesn’t have it. If you get into the pen in the fourth or fifth inning, the other team is going to be reluctant to pull the next guy out if he’s struggling. If you get into the pen early and the other team has a long string of games, someone is eventually going to get run out there just to absorb damage.
There is a definite cumulative effect to the approach. But here’s the thing. You can’t just decide that you want to start seeing pitches. You have to put together quality plate appearances. This circles me around to Kyle Tucker. If I counted properly, Kyle saw over 30 pitches across five plate appearances. He was hitless, but he had two walks. The batter in front of him had three hits, and five runs batted in.
It’s, of course, not just Kyle. The Cubs drew seven walks. they had 11 hits. That’s an average of two baserunners per inning. And that includes a perfect ninth inning for the A’s closer. The Cubs managed just one hit over the last two innings. So rewinding, that was 17 baserunners in seven innings. Almost three per inning. There was traffic all day long. Top to bottom, the Cubs are getting production in the lineup.
There’s a lot of baseball to be played. But this team can be special.
Let’s find three stars from the game and then get to the numbers.
Three Stars:
- This was definitely Seiya’s game. Seiya had three hits, two of them homers. He drove in five. He also drew a walk.
- Pete Crow-Armstrong had a couple of seeing-eye hits. One of those was a double. He was also hit by a pitch. He stole a base, he scored a run and drove in another.
- Matthew Shaw had a pair of singles and a walk. He drove in two runs and scored two.
Game 9, April 2: Cubs 10, A’s 2 (5-4)
Fangraphs
Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.
THREE HEROES:
- Superhero: Seiya Suzuki (.350). 3-5, 2 HR, BB, 5 RBI, 2 R
- Hero: Matt Shaw (.098). 2-4, BB, 2 RBI, 2 R
- Sidekick: Nico Hoerner (.079). 1-4, BB, RBI, R, 2 SB
THREE GOATS:
- Billy Goat: Justin Turner (-.044). 1-5, R
- Goat: Kyle Tucker (-.040). 0-3, 2 BB, R, SB
- Kid: Dansby Swanson (-.035). 0-5
WPA Play of the Game: Seiya Suzuki hit the first of his two homers on the day with two on and two outs in the second, increasing the lead to four. (.231)
*A’s Play of the Game: Brent Rooker homered with a runner on first and no outs in the bottom of the third. It cut the A’s deficit to three. (.098)
Cubs Player of the Game:
Yesterday’s Winner: Kyle Tucker (112 votes) over Seiya Suzuki (91)
Rizzo Award Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)
- Kyle Tucker +8
- Shōta Imanaga +6
- Miguel Amaya +5
- Seiya Suzuki +4.5
- Jon Berti +4
- 6 Players -3
- Justin Steele -5
- Ben Brown -6
Up Next: An off day and then finally, the Wrigley Opener on Friday. Shōta Imanaga (1-0, 0.82) will make his third start of the season for the Cubs. 26-year-old, righty Randy Vasquez (0-0, 0.00, 6 IP) is in line to be the Padres starter. The Padres also won on Wednesday and have exploded out of the gate with a perfect seven wins in their first seven games.