Official 2023 Chicago Cubs Season Thread Vol: (17-17)

CP1708 said:
I've been wonderin when you'd be in here Meyer.
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Arrieta/Lester will be ready (and rested) for games 1-2

Should also be set for 5-6. If we have one rainout, they could move up to 4-5, and have Jake available for a game 7. (Few innings at least)
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I typically only check most of my internets at work and this filter is hit/miss when it comes to forums. Then if it's blocked long enough, I just figured it's blocked for good but apparently today was a good day 
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Who would you rather the Cubs play? 
SportsJunkie said:
The Dodgers winning last night gave us more time to rest, especially those arms.
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That's the ONLY reason I wanted the Dodger to win.
 
Meyer23 said:
I typically only check most of my internets at work and this filter is hit/miss when it comes to forums. Then if it's blocked long enough, I just figured it's blocked for good but apparently today was a good day :lol

Who would you rather the Cubs play? 


That's the ONLY reason I wanted the Dodger to win.
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Meyer23 said:
I typically only check most of my internets at work and this filter is hit/miss when it comes to forums. Then if it's blocked long enough, I just figured it's blocked for good but apparently today was a good day :lol

Who would you rather the Cubs play? 


That's the ONLY reason I wanted the Dodger to win.
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I want the Mets to win. Because I will make that drive from DC to NY.
 
I kind of think it's going to be a wash either way. Both have a couple good pitchers and then it's like the Cubs, they sort of plummet 
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I'd like to see the Met's because the Dodger fans bug the **** outta me. They're like Oakland. Disgusting bunch they are.
 
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I'm fine facing either team. Just happy to be here this early.

Huge learning experience for all these kids.

Both LA and NY are tough, and will have homefield, but if we can get 4-5 starts from Arrieta/Lester, I like our chances.
 
Just want to say congratulations. I've always liked the Cubs since Sammy Sosa. :lol

This team is so much fun to watch. I will always root for them except they play against the Mets.

I really hope we win tomorrow so we can play against your team in NLCS. Either Dodgers or Mets, you have the best chance to win the World Series.
 
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^
(Tips cap)

We could not have asked for a better opponent to beat. I hate the cards!!
I'm just sitting back enjoying this ride. I really don't have a preference on who we should face, but.....I would like some pay back for "08" :{


I partied a lil too hard yesterday. This hang over is too real....my head :{ :x
 
Cubs confirmed that the homer hit by Thuggish Ruggish Schwarbs that landed on the right field scoreboard will be encased with plexiglass.

Awesome.
 
CHICAGO -- Finally.

So this is what it looked like. This is what it felt like. This is how the earth shook the night Chicago finally toasted a moment it had waited a century to drink in.

It was 6:54 p.m. Central Daylight Time. Hector Rondon held the baseball in his hand. Sixty feet away, Stephen Piscotty wagged his bat, waiting. Rondon took a deep breath, tugged on his cap, then turned toward the plate to deliver That Pitch.

Thousands of smart phones would record it. Families hugged in the stands, waiting for it. Rally towels spun in the breeze. To describe the deafening sound of Wrigley Field in this moment was just about impossible, because there has never been a sound quite like it. Not in this town. Not in this lifetime.

Rondon came to the stretch, paused and fired. Piscotty waved wildly at a slider in the dirt. Elation erupted in the Illinois night. Rondon leaped into the arms of his catcher, Miguel Montero.

So this is what it looked like. This is what it felt like. This is how it sounded, the night the Chicago Cubs finally tasted the sweetness that only victory in October can bring.

It only took a century. Only took until the 100th season after they moved into storied Wrigley Field, in the same year the hamburger bun was invented. Finally, in the 7,907th game the Cubs have played at this fabled intersection of Clark and Addison, they clinched a postseason series in their town, in their park, on their turf.

So maybe you're thinking -- and you have every right to think it -- that they "only" won a National League Division Series, with their emotional 6-4 triumph over the St. Louis Cardinals on Tuesday. It felt like something more, something bigger, something that transcended the normal meaning of games like this, moments like this.

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"Nobody here will ever forget that they were here," said Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, standing on the infield grass, in the eye of this euphoric storm. "And that's amazing."

Ernie Banks never experienced this moment. Fergie Jenkins never got to feel this feeling. Granted, there was no such thing as a Division Series to rescue the Cubs of Gabby Hartnett, Hack Wilson or Wildfire Schulte, but they never got to witness what Kyle Schwarber and Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez got to witness Tuesday night.

That, too, is amazing.

Schwarber is 22 years old. So is Baez. Rizzo is 26. They all hit home runs in this game that lit up the Chicago night like a lightning storm.

Baez pounded an opposite-field rocket that finished off a four-run second inning. Rizzo lofted a dramatic sixth-inning shot into the right-field bleachers, a half-inning after the Cardinals had risen up to tie the game at 4. Then Schwarber finished off the daily Youth Patrol home run barrage with a 438-foot Mars mission that cleared the brand-new right-field scoreboard and disappeared.

"Wow," said veteran catcher David Ross. "That one might be in that lake out there."

Every one of those dudes was born more than 80 years after the Cubs last won a World Series. So pardon them if they laugh at all the tales of goats and curses and Bartman, and all the things that folks in their town were sure could never be done -- not in Chicago, not by the Cubs.

"Our guys don't buy into those old narratives," said Cubs president Theo (The Curse Buster) Epstein. "They're doing this for each other. The pressure and the history don't matter to them. They were in Instructional League last year. You think they're worried about history? They were just worried about getting their laundry done."

Well, the Cubs' dirty laundry is smelling cleaner by the day now, thanks to as dynamic a collection of young players as you'll ever find in one place, except possibly in the Futures Game. The Cubs hit 10 home runs in this series -- the most in a Division Series that went four games or fewer. Exactly one of them was hit by a player older than 26. Incredible.

So that was different. So was this: On the day the Cubs finally won a postseason series in Chicago for the first time, their manager sent eight -- count 'em, eight -- different pitchers to the mound. It was only the second series clincher in history in which a team used eight pitchers. The other game (in the 2005 Atlanta-Houston NLDS) wasn't quite the same as this game -- considering that it went 18 innings.

This game, on the other hand, was Joe Maddon bullpen choreography at its finest. That was fitting, too, because it was a little less than a year ago when Maddon began talking -- right out loud -- about a moment just like this one. On his very first day on the job, too. And as usual, he nailed it.

"I visualized this," he admitted Tuesday night, as the sounds of "Sweet Home Chicago" blared across the friendly confines. "I've already visualized the next step. We'll see how it all plays out. But you've got to be a little bit of a dreamer to make it all come true."

Could any of this have happened if Maddon hadn't dreamed those dreams? We'll never know. Will we? We can see with our own eyes how comfortable his players are with the quest to make those dreams come true. That can't happen unless the manager creates an environment that somehow makes pressure -- and curses -- disappear into the mist.

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So, on a Tuesday his town will never forget, Schwarber would whomp what Ross would later describe as "a 900-foot homer." As he rounded the bases, listening to the thunder pouring out of the seats, it hit him, he said, "that this is what it's all about."

"This is what you live to play baseball for," Schwarber said, "is playing in front of your home crowd in the playoffs."

At 22, he no doubt thinks there will be a million more days like this. At 38, Ross knows better.

"I'm holding onto the memories right now," he said. "I'm holding onto each moment that I'm never going to get back. So I want to take it in. I want to enjoy it. I want to relish it, for these guys but for myself, too. It just doesn't happen every day. It doesn't happen where you change the culture in an organization, a clubhouse and a city, where all of a sudden, winning is expected. That doesn't happen every day. And that's what's happening here."

It doesn't happen every day? Ha. In this town, it doesn't even happen every century. When it does happen, it's a powerful force. It's so powerful, in fact, it's even causing Cubs fans to -- we kid you not -- believe.

"I think it validates what we're all about," Maddon said. "I think it gives our fan base hope for the future. ... They're not waiting for something bad to happen all the time. Something good is on the horizon, not necessarily something bad. I hope that's going to be the takeaway from this."

As he spoke, thousands of people remained in the seats of Wrigley Field, more than an hour after the final out, trying to freeze a moment they thought would never arrive and now never wanted to end.

"You never know when you're making a memory," Maddon said, poetically. "That's [a song line by] Rickie Lee Jones. That's exactly right. That just happened tonight. And it's fabulous."

They have another round ahead of them. Maybe two more rounds. Maybe there will be more memories to make. Maybe those memories will have to wait for some other year. They are building something special. Heck, they've already built it.

You know all those things they kept hearing about that have never happened here, could never happen here? Well, guess what?

"They're happening, man," said Ross. "And I hope they keep happening."
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arstyle27 said:
Cubs confirmed that the homer hit by Thuggish Ruggish Schwarbs that landed on the right field scoreboard will be encased with plexiglass.

Awesome.
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 I laugh every time that dude goes up the plate 
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Rizzo went up to a Taylor Swift song. I recognized it but didn't know the artist and my wife goes "Why did they pick that song for him?" I said who was it and she told me Taylor Swift and I laughed and told her they pick their own songs. 
 
The Cubs are baseball’s biggest party now, a crazy mix of bonus babies and spare parts, led by a mad-scientist manager who loves giving the middle finger to unwritten rules and an Ivy League executive who can casually namedrop rock stars without sounding obnoxious.

The Cubs have been playing (mostly bad) baseball at Wrigley Field for 100 years, but they had never seen anything like this before, clinching a playoff series at Clark and Addison for the first time in franchise history.

Beating the hated St. Louis Cardinals made it that much sweeter for a crowd of 42,411 that wouldn’t sit down in the ninth inning on Tuesday, standing on tiptoes and holding up iPhones trying to snap pictures of the final out.

The roar echoed out into the night when Hector Rondon — a Rule 5 pick who came back so much stronger from Tommy John surgery — struck out Stephen Piscotty swinging to save a 6-4 victory and end this National League Division Series in only four games.

“We’re doing things that we shouldn’t be doing this year,” Anthony Rizzo said. “And we have a great time doing it. This city deserves it. These fans deserve it.”

You could feel the press box shaking after Rizzo blasted the go-ahead shot into the right-field bleachers in the sixth inning, his second home run off Cardinals reliever Kevin Siegrist in two days. The Cubs didn’t win the division like Rizzo predicted back in January, but they do have 101 wins this year.

“When I was popping off at The Cubby Bear, I was thinking 90,” said Joe Maddon, thinking back to his first shot-and-a-beer press conference as Cubs manager last November.

The Cubs whipped this white-towel-waving crowd into a frenzy, clapping along with Starlin Castro’s walk-up music and becoming baseball’s biggest story in October. This franchise rose out of the ashes of five straight fifth-place seasons, advancing to the NLCS to face either the Los Angeles Dodgers or New York Mets on the road for Saturday’s Game 1.

“I was talking upstairs with Eddie,” said Theo Epstein, the president of baseball operations who’s tight with Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder. “This is like our first record.

“You put that record out and then things blow up and it’s a whole different time of innocence and exceeding expectations and bursting on the national scene.

“But these guys care so much about each other. Maybe it’ll get more complicated as time goes by. But I don’t think it will get any less special.”

Epstein doesn’t know if this will be the best chance for the Cubs to win their first World Series since 1908, but the unique chemistry is impossible to miss, all the clubhouse goofiness balanced by a deep roster and the tenacious way this team kept coming at the Cardinals.

The Cubs won Game 4 with seven different relievers and three rookies in the lineup, plus backup infielder Javier Baez, who’s 22 years old, had to wait until September for his call-up from Triple-A Iowa and got the crowd chanting “LAC-KEY! LAC-KEY!” after his three-run bomb off John Lackey in the second inning.

Jorge Soler showed off his rocket arm with a great throw from right field, nailing Tony Cruz at home plate and keeping it a tie game in the sixth inning. It was hard to tell where Kyle Schwarber’s solo home run landed in the seventh inning, soaring out toward Sheffield Avenue and appearing to clear the scripted Budweiser sign atop the video board in right field.

“Our guys don’t buy into the little narratives,” Epstein said. “They’re doing it for each other, for the organization. The pressure, the history doesn’t really bother these guys.

“They’re young. They’re innocent — in a great way. They were in instructional league last year. You think they’re worried about history? They’re worried about getting their laundry done in time for Saturday.”

The Cubs wore their new official postseason T-shirts: “CHICAGO WANTS IT MORE.” A fan held up a sign: “NEXT YEAR IS NOW.” From the top of the dugout, Schwarber and Rizzo high-fived fans, Rondon sprayed champagne into the crowd and arrow-shooting reliever Fernando Rodney puffed a victory cigar.

Forget that stuff about goats and ghosts and curses. The Cubs believe they are a team of destiny now. Rizzo — a two-time All-Star first baseman who just turned 26 in August and has grown into a real leader — believes they are playing for the old Cubs who could only dream about moments like this.

“They left this uniform in a better position,” Rizzo said. “And that’s what we want to do. We want to leave this uniform in a better position. Look at this weather in October with the wind blowing out. It hasn’t blown out all year here. If that doesn’t have something to do with Ernie Banks smiling down on us, I don’t know what does. He would be really proud of this team. Billy Williams said it at Ernie’s funeral: This team is going to win in 2015 as a team.”
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CHICAGO -- There aren't a lot of links to the past in the Chicago Cubs' clubhouse, where ancient history consists of the 12 days before Kris Bryant was called up in April. Closing the book on the club's tortured history is a necessary step to write the future.

But walking along the field Tuesday night as the Cubs soaked themselves in celebratory booze after clinching a berth in the National League Championship Series with a 6-4 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 4 of the NLDS, I ran into one of the holdovers from the old days, the great Tim Buss.

He's not a household name like Rizzo or Bryant, but "Bussy" has been the Cubs' strength-and-conditioning coach since 2001. He was here for the Sammy Sosa circus, the wild 2003 season and all the highs and lows that followed until the new regime took over without tearing everything down and building it up better than ever.

A lifelong Cubs fan living his dream, Bussy is, in many ways, the heart and soul of the organization. He's the guy the old players come back to visit and he's the guy the new players befriend.

So while chairman Tom Ricketts soaks in the cheers and president Theo Epstein gives the money quotes, take a few moments to have a couple pops in honor of Bussy, just a normal guy behind the scenes helping make it all happen.

"I cried about three different times today just thinking about this moment," he said. "It's my soul, baby. This is what's it about."

Buss was going crazy in the weight room stretching out the reserve players when rookie slugger Kyle Schwarber jacked a solo homer on top of the "Schwarboard" in right field in the seventh inning. It was the 12th home run the Cubs hit this postseason, almost all by the youth movement that was billed, correctly, as the future. Who knew they'd be this good this soon?

You don't have to remember the past to enjoy this present, but a little context doesn't hurt, either.

Watching the young Cubs smack homers into the breeze reminds some of the 12 total runs scored by their forebears in the six division-series games in 2007 and '08. But no one has to obsess over the past anymore. You're not dreaming. The Cubs are this good.

On Tuesday, with a packed house expecting the best and trying not to think of the worst as Cubs starter Jason Hammel allowed two runs in the first inning, Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo and Schwarber all homered: a go-ahead shot, a tiebreaker and an insurance blast. The night before, in an 8-6 victory, the first six hitters in the Cubs order wound up smacking balls all over the bleachers in a record-setting night.

"They're relentless," Buss said. "Just a bunch of crazy kids."

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Nothing was crazier than Baez hitting a three-run homer in his first at-bat of his first playoff start Tuesday. It came in the second after Hammel, who was almost pulled for a pinch hitter in what was always going to be a short start, hit an RBI single with two out.

"That was very 2015 Cubs," said Epstein, who called it a "Javy bomb."

There is no question the upstart Cubs, who went from tanking to interesting to dominant in the span of a year, deserve to be playing in the NLCS, just four wins from that elusive World Series berth. They beat 98-win Pittsburgh at PNC Park and disposed of the 100-win Cardinals in four games to get here.

They won with their Cy Young candidate Jake Arrieta pitching a complete game in Pittsburgh that was somehow beneath his standards, and they won with Arrieta scuffling at Wrigley on Monday night.

They did things that Cubs teams of the past would never do. This team will be the standard that other Cubs teams will measure themselves against. Pretty soon, no one is going to be talking about 2003 or 2007 or 2008. This could be the postseason that redefines a franchise that famous for poetic heartbreak.

"I think it validates what we're about," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. "I think it gives our fan base hope for the future regarding, they're not waiting for something bad to happen all of the time. Something good is on the horizon, not something bad. Hopefully that's going to be the takeaway from all of this."

After getting blanked 4-0 to open this series, bringing back bad memories of postseasons past, the Cubs won three straight over the franchise's most bitter rivals. Forget the historical importance for a second, the Cubs beat two really good teams to get here.

"To go through the Pirates in the wild-card game and now the Cardinals, we feel like we can beat anybody," Arrieta said. "We're a tough team to play no matter who it is."

While young guys such as Bryant don't dwell in the almighty narrative of beating the Cardinals, those who have been around a little more can find some meaning behind it.

Epstein referred to the Cardinals as "the older brothers who have been kicking sand in our face for 100 years." As the guy who led the Red Sox over their big brothers in the Bronx, this is a story he knows how to tell.

"I had to pinch myself," Epstein said. "It's not enough that you're watching guys who were in instructional league last year hitting balls over the scoreboard in the NLDS, but it has to be the first time we played the freaking Cardinals in the playoffs."

Yes, he said "freaking."

Whether it was the Cardinals or not, the Cubs were going to celebrate.

For the third time this month, the Cubs taped up the plastic in the clubhouse, turned on the lasers and smoke machine, and emptied cases of alcohol on each other before taking the party onto the field for an hour. You haven't lived until you've watched John Cusack and Fernando Rodney pose for a picture doing the reliever's famous bow-and-arrow pose.

These Cubs, who love to refer to themselves as "young and dumb," know how to live it up. But that's part of their charm. They celebrate every win with a dance party, and they won 97 games this season.

Don't think they're satisfied. When the final out was made, Maddon said his first thoughts were, "Who we playing, L.A. or the Mets? That's exactly what I thought, where are we going next?"

Game 5 of the Dodgers and Mets series is Thursday in Los Angeles, and then the Cubs will know where the next step of their journey begins.

"This isn't why I signed here," said pitcher Jon Lester, who inked a $155 million deal in the offseason. "I signed here for the World Series, so we've got a long way to go."

So celebrate another night or two, Cubs fans, but make sure to get your rest. This party is just beginning.
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The plan all along was for this Cubs team to be built on offense. After clinching a trip to the club’s first NLCS in a dozen years, team president Theo Epstein discussed how he and his staff once envisioned these bats all coming together and leading this group to great places.

“We’d write out the lineups on a cocktail napkin at 2 a.m. in some (crappy) hotel bar thinking where we might get these guys in the draft,” Epstein reminisced while celebrating with his team after a 6-4 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. “Then we get them and we put them up on the white board in the board room and start to get pretty excited. Then in spring training you see them play together for the first time and you start to get really excited. Then the regular season happens and we take off. Now you see those guys playing together and beating the Cardinals in the Division Series. It’s just insanity.”

Epstein’s on point: This is all insanity. Javier Baez taking a John Lackey two-seam fastball on the outer edge of plate the other way for a three-run homer in a big second inning. Kyle Schwarber launching a Kevin Siegrist four-seamer over the right-field video board. For the second evening in a row, the offense put on a show with the long ball and will get the headlines, but as general manager Jed Hoyer told me, they weren’t alone in this one.

“Everyone’s talking Baez, everyone’s talking Schwarber,” Hoyer said. “They deserve all that, but I do think the bullpen was MVP of the game.”

Bullpens are always an interesting study, but the group used by the Cubs on Tuesday afternoon was quite the eclectic collection. First came Justin Grimm, who was acquired from Texas two summers ago when the Cubs sent Matt Garza south. Many believed that manager Joe Maddon would have a quick hook with starter Jason Hammel, and after he walked the leadoff man in the fourth, the Cubs skipper walked to the mound and called for Grimm.

The righty had been lights-out for much of the season for the North Siders, but couldn’t get things going down the stretch, giving up six runs and walking 12 in his final 11 1/3 innings of work. If you spent any time talking to Grimm during that down period, you knew it was taking a toll on him mentally. When he came into this game, he immediately induced what appeared to be an easy groundball out, only to see third baseman Kris Bryant fail to make the play, likely thinking two and ending up getting none.

But instead of folding under the pressure of a game the Cubs had just grabbed a two-run lead in, Grimm responded by striking out the next three batters and handing the keys back over to the offense.

“I think it was more trusting my stuff and staying within myself,” Grimm said about the difference between the final month of the season and Tuesday’s outing. “I just beat myself over the past three weeks of the season. That was the biggest thing, I was going to make sure that didn’t happen. Honestly, just watching these guys out of the bullpen helped me a lot. When my name didn’t get called, it hurt a little bit to be honest with you. But to just watch these guys attack the zone like they did, you learn a little something. Wood and Cahill, they’ve been unbelievable.”

Grimm was referring to Travis Wood and Trevor Cahill, who followed him in what turned out to be a seven-man parade of bullpen arms. Wood started the year in the rotation, only to lose his job seven starts into the season. Instead of sulking about a lost role, Wood stepped up out of the ‘pen, tossing 58 innings with a 2.95 ERA and 30.2 percent strikeout rate. Cahill was released by the Braves in June and signed to a minor-league deal by the Cubs in mid-August.

“I was at the point where I didn’t know what I was going to do with my career,” Cahill said. “I didn’t know the path that I was going to take. If anything, I was thinking, ‘Why am I coming back to Triple-A to throw out of the bullpen? I should just be getting ready to find a job as a starter in spring training.’ They had faith in me, Theo had faith in me when I didn’t have faith in me.”

Cahill didn’t have his best outing on Tuesday, giving up two runs and allowing the Cardinals to tie the game at four—Hoyer didn’t think Cahill was all that bad: “A little BABIP right there,” he said of the few hits the reliever gave up—but he did vulture a win after Anthony Rizzo and Schwarber sent a few balls into and over the right-field bleachers. Cahill’s performance with the Cubs leading up to this game was nothing short of brilliant. By largely ditching his cutter and going with a combination of his sinker, curveball, and changeup, Cahill was able to strike out 22 batters and give up just four runs in his 17 innings of work for the Cubs in September, earning himself a spot on the postseason roster.

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Cubs catcher Miguel Montero caught Cahill when he was really strong with the Arizona Diamondbacks, as well as when he was struggling mightily.

“He was probably—[mentally], he lost it a little bit, and he probably didn't have anybody helping him, behind him,” Montero said. “And then he came here, and as soon as he came here, I sat down with him and I said, you know what, I heard you were changing your delivery in Arizona in Spring Training, I heard they changed your arm angle and whatnot, blah blah blah. I want you to be you. Just go out there and throw the ball. Just be you and don't worry about the rest. I mean, he's been impressive, man. He's probably been as good as I’ve ever seen him.”

Cahill has gone from spiking fastballs in the dirt and a walk rate above 10 percent, to looking dominant out of the ‘pen.

“He was a pretty good acquisition by the organization in late August,” Montero said. “I was really happy when we signed him. I actually remember texting somebody in the front office saying, hey, that was a great sign.”

After Cahill came Fernando Rodney for two outs. Rodney had struggled as the closer in Seattle the last two seasons, eventually getting designated for assignment and then traded to the Cubs in August. As many in this story, Rodney has thrived during his small sampling in Chicago, allowing just one run in his 12 innings of work leading up to the playoffs. Rodney was followed by Clayton Richard—who hadn’t appeared in the bigs since 2013 and was acquired from the Pirates in early July to make a spot start—who calmly retired the hot-hitting Jason Heyward via strikeout. Pedro Strop—acquired along with Jake Arrieta two seasons ago—and former Rule 5 pick Hector Rondon closed things out for the Cubs while allowing just one baserunner in the final two frames.

It was truly a mish-mosh of bullpen arms that managed to get things done for six innings and help take the Cubs to the NLCS.

“Listen, I have a lot of confidence and faith in all our guys” Maddon said. “It does say a lot, the fact that you have sometimes look underneath some stones, you have to turn them over and see what's underneath there. You have to research a little bit more deeply and find out. Our group is very thorough to say the least, and like I said before the game today, talking about our scouting department, professional, free agent and also the player development is outstanding. I got to see it in spring training. The entire group is really outstanding.”

It’s not the typical way to build a ‘pen, but the Cubs have managed to piece it all together and make it work. As Hoyer told me, you’d prefer to build a relief core through your farm system, but sometimes you just have to rely on your pro scouts to do their job and find those who slip through the cracks.

“Building a bullpen is not sexy at all and tonight those guys came up really big for us,” Hoyer said.

Pitching coach Chris Bosio credited the players themselves for putting in the work and being selfless enough to fill whatever role was asked of them. However he also pointed to a front office that doesn’t always look at things like other organizations would.

“They’re creative, they think outside the box,” Bosio said. “You’re picking up three starters that are in our bullpen now. Most organizations wouldn’t do that or would say they just don’t have enough room for them because they don’t have enough starting spots. We’ve had a lot of success taking starters and sticking them in the pen. There’s comfort and familiarity when you have those guys down there and there’s a lot of experience which always helps in the postseason.”

If the Cubs are going to get through the NLCS and into their first World Series in 70 years, it’s going to be on the backs of Arrieta, Jon Lester, and the big bats in the lineup. But on Tuesday, a few role players, many of whom were given up on or never given a chance by others, helped pave the way to the biggest celebration Wrigleyville has seen in a long while. It’s only fitting for a team not many believed would still be rolling in the middle of October.
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#NoPlanTho
 
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Going into the series against the battle-tested St. Louis Cardinals, a lack of playoff experience was supposed to be a problem for the Chicago Cubs. They were relying on four rookies — Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, Kyle Schwarber, and Jorge Soler — and another near rook in Javier Baez. Hell, only two of their starting position players (Miguel Montero and Dexter Fowler) had ever even played in the postseason before.

After Tuesday night’s 6-4 win over the Cardinals, the Cubs are now moving on to the National League Championship Series — and the virtues of playoff maturity lie in tatters throughout the Wrigley Field bleachers.

Bryant smashed the Game 3 go-ahead homer that gave the Cubs a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. Russell whacked a pulse-stopping triple in Game 3 and knocked in the go-ahead run in Game 2 with a well-timed squeeze play. Schwarber showed off his cartoonish power, clubbing his second and third homers of the postseason. Soler and Baez didn’t even open the series in the starting lineup.

But by the time Hector Rondon struck out Stephen Piscotty in the ninth inning Tuesday, Soler had emerged as the best player of the series and Baez had delivered one of the biggest blows of the postseason — an unlikely, electrifying, opposite-field three-run homer that started the Cubs on their way toward a clinching victory. They all make the guy who hit last night’s game-winning homer in the sixth — 26-year-old Anthony Rizzo — seem like a grizzled vet.

For as talented as all those kids are, the havoc-wreaking of Schwarber, Baez, and Soler in particular made it hard not to wonder: In an admittedly small sample size of games, what made these youngsters seem so immune to playoff pressure?

“They really are good makeup guys,” said manager Joe Maddon after the game. “They’re great character guys. They don’t make excuses. They’re very accountable to the moment.”

There’s that, and then there’s Maddon’s claim that Chicago’s veteran players and coaches provided steady leadership that helped the young guys succeed. But maybe it’s more simple: Talent wins out above all else. And by series end, the Cubs just had more of it than the Cardinals — even if a lot of their key contributors, by baseball’s standards, are still wearing diapers.

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Of course, there’s the history: The Cubs haven’t won a World Series in 107 years. This was only their second playoff-series win in as much time. And it was Chicago’s first series-clinching victory at Wrigley Field, which first welcomed the franchise in 1916. Yet what makes this win resonate even louder is how the Cubs did it: by beating the Cardinals at their own game.

To win 100 games and the NL Central crown this year, St. Louis had to overcome an avalanche of injuries. Adam Wainwright tore his Achilles, and his bullpen-restricted return before season’s end was a shocker. Matt Holliday played in just 73 games thanks to a major quad injury. Yadier Molina, Matt Adams, and other contributors also missed significant chunks of time. But the Cardinals’ parade of young talent enabled them to overcome all of that. New faces like Randal Grichuk, Stephen Piscotty, and Tommy Pham became the newest faces of #CardinalsDevilMagic, which is really just a silly, superstitious way to describe a player development machine that’s been the envy of the rest of baseball for years.

The Cubs still have lots of work to do to catch the Cardinals when it comes to producing quality homegrown pitchers. But as far as hitters go, the North Siders’ own player development success now takes a backseat to no one.

Consider Schwarber. In one sense, he’s a 22-year-old blue-chip prospect now doing what blue-chip prospects are supposed to do. The no. 4 overall pick in last year’s draft, Schwarber’s combination of patience at bat and light-tower power made him look like a future star. But his doughy build and, especially, his shaky defense made some observers wonder if the Cubs had overreached. Could a kid whose best position is DH play most days for a National League team? The Cubs tried Schwarber at catcher, eventually moved him to the outfield, and simply overlooked his weaknesses to focus on his strengths.

So far in these playoffs, the results have been phenomenal. After going 2-for-3 with a tape-measure homer against the Pirates in the wild-card game, Schwarber batted .500/.582/1.100 in 12 trips to the plate during the NLDS. In the seventh inning of Game 4, he pummeled a Kevin Siegrist pitch so high and so far that it cleared the top of the damn scoreboard. It’s easy to fall into hyperbole with rookies, because all the great things they do make up an outsize portion of a limited résumé. And Schwarber certainly has holes in his game, including his so-so defense, his lack of speed, and — despite the rocket shot off Siegrist — his inability to hit tough left-handers. But you watch his swing-for-the-moon approach, the way the ball flies off his bat, his lumpy physique, hell, even his facial features, and, well …

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The 22-year-old Baez navigated a bumpier road to reach this point. Last August, he whacked three homers in his first series (against the Rockies) in the big leagues. But then he became a relentless strikeout monster, whiffing 92 times and posting a .161/.223/.281 slash line in his final 199 at-bats of last season. In retrospect, Baez’s initial big league splash might’ve had more to do with playing at the hitter fun house that is Coors Field than his own raw power.

Those holes in Baez’s swing marooned him in Triple-A for most of this season. Then the Cubs called him up as part of the September 1 roster expansion, and suddenly he was back in the lineup, taking advantage of an unsettled second-base situation and Maddon’s tinkering tendencies. He made 80 plate appearances over the rest of the regular season. He still showed a lousy batting eye (24 strikeouts against just four walks) and rarely showed his power potential (just one home run). But he also played four different infield positions, establishing himself as a solid defender and versatile insurance policy who still had that pop in his repertoire.

Then Russell left Game 3 after hurting his hamstring legging out a triple. Suddenly the Cubs had to cash in for Game 4. With two outs in the bottom of the second, Maddon left Jason Hammel in to face John Lackey with two men on.1 Hammel slapped a run-scoring single up the middle to cut the Cards’ lead to 2-1. Baez stepped up next. Lackey’s first pitch was a good two or three inches off the outside corner … and Baez walloped it into a thicket of delirious right-field bleacher creatures.

That proved to be the second time this series that a kid took over a lineup spot previously manned by another player. After a Game 1 shutout in which the Cubs managed just three hits and with the team next facing a left-hander in Game 2, Maddon tapped Soler to take Chris Coghlan’s spot in the lineup. Soler immediately ascended to a higher ethereal plane, cracking a homer and a double while walking twice. He then singled, homered, and walked twice in Game 3, making it an incredible nine straight times that he’d reached base, including a pinch-hit walk in Game 1.

Here was a bit of vindication both for Soler and for Maddon. Like Baez, Soler had shown flashes of incredible talent in his first brush with the big leagues last year, but the outfielder kept it going for longer, batting a robust .292/.330/.573 in 97 plate appearances. He looked so good in that cameo that Maddon likened his 22-year-old human toolbox to Vladimir Guerrero … with better plate discipline. But Soler didn’t live up to that promise for most of this year, hitting just 10 homers in 101 games and striking out nearly four times as often as he walked.

Then he went absolutely nuts when the Cubs needed it most. Last night, he crunched balls with his violent right-handed swing, showed off that promising batting eye that Maddon insisted he had, and made a crucial throw to quell a sixth-inning Cardinals rally at one of the most pivotal moments of the series.

The Cardinals battled valiantly, but simply couldn’t muster the talent to match the Cubs’ cavalcade of free-swinging young’uns. Aside from a well-placed double in that sixth inning, Tony Cruz looked overmatched as an injury replacement for Molina. Jaime Garcia suffered from a stomach ailment in Game 2. Holliday’s lingering quad injury rendered him punchless in this series, just as he was upon his return from the DL in mid-September. A seemingly deep bullpen unraveled during both games at Wrigley. And adding insult to injury, the Cubs’ own pen proved instrumental in victory, providing six innings of relief in support of Hammel, including appearances by three different pitchers who’d been designated for assignment at some point this season.

This deep into the postseason, every team will have plenty of mashers and bat-missers at its disposal. But the remaining team with the best regular-season record has more position-player talent to throw at opponents than either of its potential NLCS foes. Throw in the historic Jake Arrieta and these guys just might be the Senior Circuit favorites.

When a young group makes the playoffs, we’ll often hear about how the players weren’t supposed to be there this quickly. Well, the Cubs still are. And with this group of precocious pulverizers taking the field, don’t count on them going away anytime soon.
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Yall seen that video from an apartment rooftop a mile from Wrigley? You could here Go Cubs Go after we won....chills.
 
I enjoyed the interview video of Tom Ricketts during the celebration Tuesday night here at the top of this CSN article. In particular, his comments about this season being part of the payoff for fans who stuck with the team as it was building to this moment really resonated. I firmly believe that the folks who remained passionately interested during the low years of The Plan are enjoying these last few weeks as much as anyone (and much more than they would have if they’d checked out for a while).
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8o

#NoPlanTho
 
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Baseball America named Kris Bryant its Rookie of the Year for 2015, which, well, obviously. He’s going to get more awards like that before this calendar year is up, but this is especially cool (and it’s the first time anyone has done it in successive years):
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