Cubs 16, Blue Jays 2: I Mean, Yikes

 

Wrigley Field remains pretty nice though

The two-thousandth inning of Kevin Gausman's very fine career was a scoreless second, set against the picturesque backdrop of a Friday afternoon game under clear skies at Wrigley Field. Not bad! It is a to be lamented, though, that the one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth inning of that same fine career, the very inning that preceded it, was a twelve-batter, seven-run mess—although one that could have been stopped well short (like five runs short!) of what it became, it must be said, had the generally and genuinely delightful Jésus Sanchez not had one clank off his glove as he ran towards the foul line for what was charitably scored a key double rather than a brutal error (Sanchez insisted the ball had been foul, despite there being not enough room for a camp chair, as Vin Scully has said in similar circumstances, between the right field line and the wall; it was a truly baffling sequence). There was plenty of poor pitching from the inordinate number of Blue Jays pitchers who took the mound, as you would expect from the grim final score, but roughly half of those sixteen Cubs runs arose out of defensive miscues in considerable excess of the two errors posted to the scoreboard: Okamoto kicked one at third, Schneider muffed a pair at second, and Sanchez, in addition to the strange ordeal described above, also managed to turn a perfectly catchable ball into a bases-clearing triple later in the game with just one of the worst jumps you'll see (good guy, bad reads? is that the Jésus Sanchez story?). It really was quite a spectacle! In addition to the seven runs charged to Guasman, the only other Blue Jays pitchers to actually get dinged were the recently-recalled-and-immediately-thereafter-demoted Brendon Little (that's a rough twenty-four hours, and entering a game with a 24.55 ERA only to see that number increase after an inning of work has to be a bad feeling), and, unfortunately, Tyler Rogers, dinged for five, though it is surely some consolation that none of those runs were deemed "earned." Let's hear it for Myles Straw, though, who, in our post Tyler-Heineman-era (he has been traded home to the Angels [not a euphemism for an untimely demise, but literally where he has gone to play further professional baseball close to his actual home]), is our only position player willing and/or able to just coach-pitch it in there when things get out of hand, and he lobbed a creditable inning-and-a-third, allowing four hits and a walk along the way, but no runs charged to him as such. A mercy that we only needed to cover eight innings, and not the full nine!

I must also note finally and with regret that, contrary to my hopeful hopes, it seems as though Vladdy has not, in fact, figured everything out in the wake of his home run at Fenway, but really quite to the contrary, seems to have instead gone oh-for-three and left the game early after clearly wincing in discomfort with more of the light back troubles that have lightly troubled his back for more of this season than you'd hope to see (backs are tricky!). Today is probably the day though! If he hit one-homer-per-series the rest of the way that'd be pretty good! Think about it! That's still a good amount!  

KS