Cubs Postseason: Cubs’ resilience forces NLDS Game 5

The Oxford English Dictionary‘s oldest recorded use of the word “resilience” is in a nearly 400-year old history book by Francis Bacon. The way the word has been used since then has evolved, and the OED tracks those updates, right up to the most recent, in an academic article from 2005. The range of meanings for resilience is wide, but the Cubs might inspire a 2025 update to the word.

After the Game 2 loss in Milwaukee on Monday night, there was very little likelihood that the division series would return there for a Game 5, but in an impressive show of resilience, the Cubs have forced a winner-take-all game on Saturday.

Doing that has meant showing many of the meanings of resilience over time: bouncing back, resuming their original shape, absorbing energy, and recovering quickly.

In Game 4 of the NLDS Thursday night, starting pitcher Matt Boyd did all of that. He went to work immediately after his early exit from Game 1, and his adjustments showed: Across 4 2/3 innings in Game 4, Boyd didn’t allow a run and scattered the Brewers’ baserunners.

“Getting through the first inning was to me the key for Matthew [Boyd’s] outing,” manager Craig Counsell said. “Then as it went on, you just saw — landing the slow breaking ball early in the count to get ahead I thought was
kind of the difference, and it just puts the hitter on what Matthew is so good at, is kind of that hard-soft combination that gets the hitter in between, and landing whether it be the slow breaking ball or the changeup early let him kind of play with the hitter’s timing, and he did a really nice job of it.”

Carson Kelly, who caught Boyd in Game 1 and again Thursday night, said the two of them had a 15-20 minute meeting before the Game 4 start going over all that they had worked on between starts, namely getting balls to Boyd’s glove side more than he did last Saturday.

“[It was] opening up some more opportunities to go to other pitches for us,” Kelly said.

Along with that, Boyd scaled back his changeup usage in favor of challenging hitters on the inside part of the plate with his fastball. That showed; Boyd had six strikeouts in Game 4, including a decisive fanning of Christian Yelich in the fifth inning to cap off Boyd’s outing.

Offensively, the Cubs have struggled to score throughout the postseason, and that played a role in the Games 1 and 2 losses. Getting over the three-run hump on Wednesday proved enough to force Thursday night’s game, and scoring early and adding on insurance runs on Game 4 secured a 6-0 series-tying victory with authority.

Much of Thursday’s run-scoring came from guys who have struggled at the plate the most in these playoffs. Ian Happ hit a three-run homer in the first inning to give the Cubs a familiar early lead, and later in the game Matt Shaw hit an RBI single in the sixth inning, and Kyle Tucker supplied a seventh-inning solo shot to supply the extra runs the Cubs have been wanting for through much of the postseason.

“You want to help the team in any way you can, especially in October, so it’s frustrating a little bit,” Shaw said of his earlier struggles at the plate in this series. “But being able to go out there and have a better game is really nice.”

Getting Tucker hot at the plate again would be particularly significant for the Cubs’ hopes of winning Game 5 on Saturday and moving on to their first NLCS since 2017. Tucker walked twice and hit a single to go with his home run in Game 4, and in Game 3 he had two base hits and a walk.

“I feel good. I’m swinging at pitches I want to swing at and laying off some of the other ones,” Tucker said. “It’s not always going to go your way, but as long as you can go up there and have a chance and put yourself in good spots, you’re at least giving yourself a shot. I’m just trying to put up some competitive at-bats, whether it’s a walk or single or just trying to move a guy over. Obviously take some barrels and get on base and score some runs, so I’m just trying to do my best with all that.”

The resilience of Matt Boyd and the offense gave Game 4 a much different outcome than the first game of this series. Kelly said that the team’s ability to do that comes from their “business as usual” approach to each day all season long. Each day exists in something of a silo, and that helped the Cubs win two games in a row while facing imminent playoff elimination otherwise.

The series isn’t over yet, of course. The Cubs will still have to go back to Milwaukee to win another game. Winning that one will require the same qualities that have gotten them from the brink of elimination for two straight games.

On a more tangible level, how that will work is still up for consideration. Where Boyd was readily available at his locker to talk after Game 3 and made it quite clear that he was going to be the Cubs’ Game 4 starter, Shota Imanaga — probably the most likely guy to get the ball on Saturday — lingered only long enough to tell assembled media that he “hadn’t heard anything,” so there wasn’t much for him to talk about.

That could very well be strategic gamesmanship on Counsell’s part. There’s nothing to be gained by announcing so soon who he plans to use as his starter in Game 5, and no matter who it is, that pitcher will have a short leash. For both teams, the bullpens will almost certainly be heavily used, and it will be an “all hands on deck” situation. After Game 3, Jameson Taillon said he would be ready to get outs if called upon, for example.

That 2005 use of the word resilience, as recorded in the OED, is defined as a material’s ability to absorb strain. That might be the biggest factor in a Game 5 Cubs win in Milwaukee. The crowds there in Games 1 and 2 certainly played a role in those Brewers wins, just like the Wrigley crowds gave the Cubs an extra boost the past two days. Pete Crow-Armstrong said the playoff crowds have been like having a tenth player on the field.

But Counsell’s message the past two days has been about getting back to Milwaukee, no matter the pressure that’s going to entail.

“It was pack your bags,” he said of what he told the Cubs before Game 4. “We get to pack our bags, man. That’s all we wanted to do today was pack our bags. We get to pack our bags.”