The Cubs were crushed by the Brewers, 9-3.
If you watched the Cubs these last two days in Milwaukee and were prone to knee-jerk reactions, you’d stand pat with all of your prospect capital or shop in the clearance bin. You hate to ever use two games as any kind of litmus test. But on these two days, these are two teams headed in completely different directions.
This has been a fun season in part because there just haven’t been a ton of non-competitive games. Having one in this series is a crying shame. For what it’s worth, I didn’t consider Monday’s game a non-competitive game, despite the four-run loss. That game felt like a landslide by the end. But the Cubs made the Brewers work for it, emptying basically their entire bullpen. Yes, there was both sequencing and luck involved with the one good inning, but those runs count too and they did have something to do with it.
It’s ironic in a way, but the Cubs jumped out to a division in part because of the fringe additions of guys like Drew Pomeranz in season. Tuesday’s Brewers hero, Andrew Vaughn, has been one of the biggest contributors to their meteoric July. So one team used those shrewd, fringey moves based on identifying a skill set and then the other.
I think, if you really intently watched these two games, you saw two very good teams. Talent top to bottom, guys that can make you work. Deep rosters. Both teams accumulate patient hitters. Both teams target good defensive players and speed. Both teams have pitchers who pitch to a team strategy. But the Brewers look light years better, in large part because none of the first four hitters in the Cubs lineup has done anything superstar like. Kyle Tucker’s been on a ton and Pete Crow-Armstrong has made contributions. But no homers. Nothing particularly energizing.
The Brewers have played so well that they’ve made the Cubs look ordinary. It reminds part of my brain of the Twins against the White Sox in the Frank Thomas era. The White Sox were so often more impressive. But the Twins would overachieve over and over again. And they so frequently beat the White Sox with a million bloopers. Though to be fair to this Brewers team, they aren’t bloopers. They are hitting seemingly every pitch on the screws and laying off of everything that isn’t in the zone.
I’m not here to whine or mudsling. There just isn’t an eloquent way to say it. If the Brewers haven’t been involved in at least sign stealing on a high level over these last 10 years, then teams should be trying to hire every single person they can get their hands on out of the Brewers organization. They do so much right that when it’s going right, they look like a major league team facing one of its affiliates but in a competitive game.
Vaughn in the perfect metaphor for the Brewers. The talent-starved White Sox traded him for a 30-year-old free agent to be pitcher. I mean, I get it. With a homer among three hits, he raised his wRC+ on the year from 78 to 84. Also, he came into this game with a 208 wRC+ as a Brewer. This is his fifth homer in 57 plate appearances and he now has an eye-popping 21 RBI in just 15 games with Milwaukee.
Meanwhile, I feel like Dansby Swanson is the perfect metaphor for the Cubs right now. The more I watch him, the more I see him have quality plate appearance after quality plate appearance. The approach is there. But the results are always just a little less than. It’s an absurd thing to say, but I wonder if as Dansby ages, he’ll be less good because he was so good. There are always guys that hang around in the majors because they sweat all of the percentages. They work harder and they press every edge because they just aren’t super gifted. I wonder if being really good came so naturally to Dansby for so long that he has trouble adapting as his skills erode.
I don’t know if that is even a thing. Or just a frustrating season that is nowhere near as bad as a lot of Cubs fans feel he is. He’s got a 98 wRC+ which is right in line with what he did last year and pretty similar to what he did in 2021. Ignoring the pretty small sample of his rookie year, Dansby has only been an above average hitter (at least by wRC+) in three seasons. One of those was the shortened 2020 season. The other two were 2022 and 2023. Like Ian Happ, he is one of those players who kind of is what he is. For a lot of people, that just isn’t good enough.
Never judge a team by how they look when they are playing out of their minds or when they are off. This Brewers team isn’t as good as they are playing, and this Cubs team isn’t as bad as they’ve looked in this series. The Brewers have certainly positioned themselves to make a strong run at the best record in the Central. But the talent gap isn’t immense between these two teams. The Brewers are certainly better 20-25 on the roster and probably better 16-20. I suspect the Cubs are a fair bit better 1-15. I’ve said it probably a hundred times and may say it 100 more before I’m done writing, the regular season is very much about the players 20-40 on your roster.
The marathon requires depth. The Cubs have no bench. Their rotation has really been blown up by injuries. Their pen isn’t as good as its performance. When Kyle Tucker, Seiya Suzuki and Pete Crow-Armstrong are on, they can beat any team in baseball. They aren’t that team right now. The Marquee broadcast pointed out that Tucker is in his worst stretch as a Cub, really struggling over the last 20 games or so. Also. he has an 18 game on-base streak and has reached base 28 times in those 18 games. If this is his only year in Chicago and it does end with a trophy, he’ll be woefully underappreciated. A guy that can get on something like 1.5 times per game during a slump is really rare air.
Heavy sigh. What a crummy two days to be a Cubs fan. But you’ve all been through so much worse. Get it together and let’s avoid the sweep.
Key Storylines: (turbo edition)
- Starting Pitching: Rough. Four runs in four innings.
- Relief Pitching: Rougher. Five relievers combined to allowed five runs in four innings, killing any chance of a comeback.
- Homer Over Reliance: They got one. They also had three doubles. Three walks. No steals. Nine hits, three walks should probably get you more than three runs.
- Third Base Production: Matt Shaw a double in four at bats.
- Dansby Swanson: Batted seventh. An RBI-single in four at bats.
- Opposing starter: Righty. They made him work hard at times, but just couldn’t ever come up with the big hit to extend a rally.
Pitch Counts:
- Cubs: 174 in 8 IP, 42 BF
- Brewers: 128, 38 BF
Same story two straight days for the Cubs offense. They made the Brewers work, but just never really had anything to show for it. Aaron Ashby’s 10 outs in 12 batters faced gave the Brewers a full load bullpen heading into tomorrow’s game.
The Cubs pitching was horrendous. Almost 22 pitches per inning is a disaster. The Cubs used five relievers just to get through a blow out loss. Not until the two minor league relievers did the Cubs get decent innings. The Cubs leverage relievers mostly haven’t pitched in the series. They can chase a win if it is there. But they may have to use leverage relievers either way to get through tomorrow ahead of an off day and a likely roster shuffle via trades.
Three Stars:
- Nico Hoerner channeled his inner 23. Three hits, one a solo homer.
- Pete Crow-Armstrong had a hit a walk, a sac fly. He drove in one and scored one.
- Ryan Brasier retired the only two batters he faced. There wasn’t a lot of good.
Game 107, July 29: Brewers 9, Cubs 3 (62-45)
Fangraphs
Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.
THREE HEROES:
- Superhero: Nico Hoerner (.174). 3-4, HR, RBI, R
- Hero: Pete Crow-Armstrong (.063). 1-2, BB, SF, RBI, R
- Sidekick: Ian Happ (.007). 1-3, 2B
THREE GOATS:
- Billy Goat: Colin Rea (-.190). 4 IP, 21 BF, 8 H, BB, 4 ER, 2 K (L 8-5)
- Goat: Seiya Suzuki (-.178). 1-4, DP
- Kid: Reese McGuire (-.119). 1-4
WPA Play of the Game: It was only 2-1 when Seiya Suzuki batted with runners on first and third in the fifth inning. He grounded into a double play and then it all fell apart.(.165)
*Cubs Play of the Game: Matt Shaw doubled leading off the fifth. (.087)
Cubs Player of the Game:
Yesterday’s Winner: Michael Busch received 104 of 120 votes.
Rizzo Award Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)
The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.
- Kyle Tucker +28
- Matthew Boyd +20
- Shōta Imanaga +16
- Jameson Taillon/Miguel Amaya +11
- Matt Shaw/Jon Berti -7
- Julian Merryweather -15
- Ben Brown -18
- Dansby Swanson -23.33
- Seiya Suzuki -29
Up Next: The series finale on a quick turnaround. Al will bring you the full preview at 11 a.m. CT.