Cubs Postseason: Stumbling again, Cubs down 0-2 in NLDS

After two games in Milwaukee, the Cubs are on the ropes.

On Saturday afternoon and again on Monday night, the Cubs have punched first only to get immediately knocked back into their corner. In Game 1 on Saturday, the Brewers answered Michael Busch’s first-inning solo shot with a series of extra base hits that eventually ended starter Matt Boyd’s day after recording just two outs. Then in Game 2 on Monday, Seiya Suzuki hit a first-inning three-run shot and starter Shota Imanaga kicked off the bottom half of the frame with back-to-back strikeouts. Things were looking up, until Imanaga put two runners on for improbable Brewers savior Andrew Vaughn, who promptly erased the Cubs’ lead with a three-run homer of his own.

And that was essentially that.

“I ruined the game. There’s a lot of frustration within myself,” Imanaga told reporters via interpreter Edwin Stanberry.

To be fair to Imanaga, while he is part of the Cubs’ problem, it’s not as simple as him giving up a three-run homer in the first inning. There’s also the ongoing issue of an offense that has yet to score more than three runs in an entire game this postseason. After Suzuki’s blast in the first inning Monday night, they got a runner to scoring position just once, in the second inning.

“That’s a pretty good sign that we’re not creating enough pressure. We had one hit after the second inning,” manager Craig Counsell said. “That’s going to add up to a lot of zeros, and that’s what happened the last seven or eight innings. We’ve got to find a way to just create more pressure, and that’s base runners, hits, walks. We’ve got to have more pressure and make innings and kind of pitching decisions much tougher on the other side.”

There are managing decisions of Counsell’s worth parsing through, like whether or not handing the ball to Boyd on short rest on Saturday was really the best choice. Or if an opener for Imanaga in Game 2 of the wild card series was necessary, then why roll him out in the first inning on Monday night.

But in both of those cases, the pitchers still have to execute. Boyd might be past his previous career high in innings thrown in a season, but he’s healthy and does not show any glaring signs of fatigue. And Imanaga has been struggling with giving up home runs since the beginning of September. He gave up a career high 10 that month, and those woes have continued in the playoffs. Whether he’s giving them up in the later innings, like the decisive homer from Manny Machado in Game 2 of the wild card, or in the first inning, like Monday night, the problem is still the same, opener or not.

Counsell can also tinker with his lineup to try and squeeze some production from that group. He can shuffle them up and down the order a little, or get inventive and use Justin Turner as his leadoff man against the Brewers’ opener like he did on Monday, but the problem is the same as with his pitching staff. Those guys have to execute too. Take a gander at the box score from Game 2 of the NLDS: when Ian Happ, Carson Kelly, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Dansby Swanson combined to go 0-for-16 with nine strikeouts, the Cubs are shooting themselves in the foot offensively. For the postseason as a whole, the Cubs have now struck out 58 times and drawn only ten walks.

One of these two things has to change in order for the Cubs to have a puncher’s chance at winning three games in a row and moving on to the NLCS. In theory, there’s a path to doing that. They have two games coming up at home; at this point, getting away from Milwaukee seems like a welcome reprieve for this team. If the Cubs can win Games 3 and 4 at Wrigley Field, then they will have forced a series reset and can try to ride that momentum back north up I-94 to grab this division series from the Brewers.

Jameson Taillon is the Cubs’ starter for Game 3 on Wednesday, which bodes well for at least giving the Cubs another shot on Thursday night. Taillon held the Padres scoreless through four innings in the decisive wild card Game 3 last week, and he needed only 60 pitches to do it, so he should be plenty fresh for Wednesday afternoon. It should also be encouraging to Cubs fans that since coming back from injury in late August, Taillon had a 1.57 ERA in six starts, not including Game 3 of the wild card.

And because of the way the Brewers offense has struck early in the first two games of the division series, Counsell has been mostly able to avoid using his best reliever arms. Long relief outings from Aaron Civale and Colin Rea in Games 1 and 2 mean that guys like Brad Keller, Caleb Thielbar, and Andrew Kittredge should be plenty fresh for the next two games in Chicago.

Pitching-wise, then, the Cubs should be set up for success back at home starting on Wednesday. They were 50-31 at Wrigley Field during the regular season, and perhaps being back in the Friendly Confines will wake up some of the Cubs’ bats.

In short, if the Cubs are going to climb off the mat and hit back at all, they have to do it an at-bat at a time, on both sides of the ball.

“It’s simple. We’ve got to just win pitches. We’ve got to win moments. You’ve got to stay with your process and our routines. It’s simple as that,” Counsell said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, but it’s done by winning one pitch at a time and succeeding one pitch at a time. It’s going to be a fun environment and we’re looking forward to Wednesday, and our road back to Milwaukee starts on Wednesday afternoon.”