Faithful, Too: “Game 69W, 70L, 71W, 72W - Nothing Happened”

“Nothing Important Happened Today” was the title of the two-part season nine premiere of The X-Files. Would love to extensively pod about The X-Files one day. Will probably never happen. Anyways, that could more or less be the summary for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the Cubs/Pirates series. There were four games on those days, two of which went to extra innings. Sounds exciting, right? Absolutely not. Over 4 games and 38 innings worth of baseball, both teams combined to score only 16 runs. Not each team: both teams. Please keep in mind that the Cubs scored 16 themselves in one game in L.A. back in April. In this series, the Cubs scored nine runs and the Pirates scored seven for a per-game average of 2.25-1.75. Again, there were two extra-inning games. Brief notes for each:

I missed the entirety of game one due to a viewing of The Shape of Water, a movie I’m hosting a pod about over on Halloweenies (check out the Patreon for that podcast!). The Cubs scraped one out 3-2 with the big highlight being PCA’s home run off a pitch that appeared to be a foot above the strike zone. He’ll hit anything out of the park.

Game two I had the misfortune of listening to on the radio. Cade Horton outdueled future Cy Young winner Paul Skenes (mark it down) and the Cubs made it to extras. Drew Pomeranz had his worst game by giving up a single, a walk, and a sac fly to lose the game (don’t forget the automatic runner at 2nd to start each extra inning). Hey, he still hasn’t given up an earned run since those automatic runners don’t count against the pitchers! The top of the Cubs order failed to do jack in the 10th, eerily reminiscent of the Phillies extra inning loss last week. They lost 2-1.

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday. Did I mention I’ve been battling a nasty cough and sore throat all week? We went outdoors for some fresh air and sunshine to battle my own version of Captain Trips. Not much doing at home for the Cubs once again, but another beautiful Boyd start and Dansby dinger were enough to beat the Pirates 2-1.

As for Sunday, watched the final few innings, which was the second extra-inning game of the series. 2-2 going into the bottom of the 10th (after a delectable, diving snag to end the top of the frame by Nico). I was not feeling optimistic. Pinch-hitting King Tuck was intentionally walked (made sense; set up a double play for the Pirates and took the bat out of Tucker’s hands). Both Tucker and the speedy automatic runner Vidal Brujan stole second and third, respectively. Jon Berti unceremoniously struck out. Kait predicted that Happ would get a hit between first and second base to win the game. Kait was right. Go Cubs go.

So a pretty boring series that ended on a very positive note. The Cubs won three of four, as I hoped (but God they should have won that Friday game). I was very nervous a while back about the Cubs pitching, and broke down how poor they had been performing opposite the solid offense. After this series, they are now tied for ninth in baseball in runs allowed; a huge leap. I’ll take a good offense and great pitching every day of the week. And hey, the Cubs are still just 0.2 runs per game behind the booming Dodgers for the most runs scored.

Off day today, but a big home series against the Brew Crew who come in 5.5 games back in the Central. It’s early yet, but a series win would be big, big, big. We shall see…