CHICAGO — It’s often said that baseball is a game of redemption.
For Cubs relief pitcher Andrew Kittredge, that redemption turned out to be nothing short of immaculate.
Kittredge, a 35-year-old right-hander acquired from the Baltimore Orioles in an MLB trade deadline deal last week, experienced very distant ends of the baseball spectrum in less than 24 hours this week at Wrigley Field.
On Tuesday night, he entered in the seventh inning of 1-1 game against the Cincinnati Reds and promptly gave up four runs while recording just one out in the Cubs’ 5-1 loss.
Kittredge was right back on the mound Wednesday afternoon, getting the ball to start the seventh inning. This time, he delivered the sixth immaculate inning in franchise history, according to a team historian, and the Cubs went on to beat the Reds, 6-1, to avoid a series sweep.
What’s an immaculate inning?
The fewest number of pitches a pitcher who starts an inning can throw to record three outs is, of course, three. That would mean three first-pitch outs, or a hitter reaching on one pitch, followed by a double play on one pitch, and then another out on one pitch.
But that’s not an immaculate inning.
Rather, an immaculate inning is when a pitcher gets three consecutive strikeouts on just nine pitches, the minimum number required to do so.
It doesn’t matter whether the strikes are looking or swinging, or if some are on foul balls, just that a pitcher strikes out three hitters on only nine pitches. So, statistically of course, there can be no balls thrown during the inning.
That’s what Kittredge accomplished in the top of the seventh inning Wednesday afternoon against the Reds’ 4-5-6 hitters, Austin Hays, Gavin Lux and Tyler Stephenson, all with swinging strikeouts.
Of the nine pitches Kittredge threw for his immaculate inning, according to MLB Gamecast, six were sinkers and three were sliders. He averaged 96 mph on the sinkers and 90.7 mph on the sliders. Four were swinging strikes, including all three third strikes, four were called strikes, and one was fouled off.
It was the first immaculate inning thrown by a Cubs pitcher since Hayden Wesneski did it on Sept. 22, 2022, against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
And it was especially gratifying for Kittredge coming right after the rough outing the night before. All a microcosm of life as an MLB relief pitcher.
“That was great,” Kittredge said, per Ryan Herrera of MLB.com. “You always want to just get back out there as quick as you can. I really appreciate that from ‘Couns’ (Cubs manager Craig Counsell), just having faith in me to put me back in that situation.
“Just good to get back out there, just so you don’t have to stew on it too long.”
Kittredge has already appeared in four games since joining the Cubs. Aside from the bad inning Tuesday night, he hasn’t allowed a baserunner in his other three appearances.
Cubs 4 games back
Kittredge’s immaculate inning came in a much-needed win for his team, which went into Thursday’s off-day on a good note.
After losing the first two games against the Reds, the Cubs managed to conclude a six-game homestand at 3-3 with Wednesday’s win in the series finale.
The Cubs have been struggling a bit lately, especially a slumping offense, although that got back on track at least for a day by smacking three homers and pounding out 11 hits in Wednesday’s win.
At 66-48, the Cubs have the second-best record in the National League and the third-best record in all of MLB entering Thursday’s games.
The Cubs go into their off-day atop the NL Wild Card standings, with a 1-game lead on the San Diego Padres and a 3.5-game lead on the News York Mets for the top Wild Card spot. They’re also 6.5 games ahead of the Reds, who are 3.5 games back of the third and final Wild Card spot entering Thursday.
With just 48 games remaining, the Cubs are in great position to make their first playoff appearance since 2020 and their first in a non-COVID-shortened season since 2018. According to FanGraphs, the Cubs woke up Thursday morning with a 97.1% chance of making the playoffs.
So, despite some recent struggles, the Cubs are not playing poorly by any means.
The problem is that the team now four games ahead of them in the NL Central, the Milwaukee Brewers, is in the midst of the most torrid stretch in franchise history and one of the hottest extended stretches in recent MLB history.
When games finished on May 18, the Brewers were 21-25 and six games behind the Cubs, who were 27-19, in the NL Central standings. Since then, the Brewers have gone 49-19, an absurd winning percentage of .721 over a 68-game stretch, to go into Thursday with MLB’s best overall record at 70-44.
Over that same 68-game stretch, the Cubs are 39-29, a winning percentage of .574, hardly bad baseball. Yet they’ve lost 10 games in the standings to the Brewers, who also have an off-day Thursday, during that time.
Obviously, the Cubs have no control of how hot the Brewers are, except when they play each other. And they’ll get that chance soon, when the teams wrap up their season series with a five-game set at Wrigley Field from Aug. 18-21 that could well determine who wins the division.
The teams have split their first eight games this season, with four wins each. The upcoming series includes a Monday doubleheader, making it a five-gamer after an earlier game between the teams at Wrigley Field was rained out.
Going into Thursday, FanGraphs gives the Brewers a 67.7% chance and the Cubs a 32.1% chance to win the division. But that number could shift dramatically by the end of the day on Aug. 21.
Before that, however, the Cubs have a six-game road trip, beginning this weekend with three games against the Cardinals in St. Louis and followed by three games against the AL-best Blue Jays in Toronto. After that is a three-game weekend home series with the Pirates before the critical series with the Brewers.