Cubs' win a look at the game within the game
Sometimes the game within a game of baseball is the most fascinating part of the day.
Take Saturday's 3-1 victory by the Chicago Cubs over the Texas Rangers at Wrigley Field.
“Absolutely,” said Cubs manager Joe Maddon, whose team has won three in a row and now sports a record of 55-35. “The game on the field itself, trying to create the best defense by the end of the game possible. There are so many things to think about in a 3-1 game today … There are all kinds of subplots going on in that game.”
Managers look good when their team is winning, and Maddon seemingly made all the right moves and pushed all the right buttons Saturday. To wit:
• Maddon played the “National League game” to the hilt, pinch hitting in the sixth inning for starting pitcher Jason Hammel, who worked a solid 6 to improve to 8-5. Maddon sent Matt Szczur up to pinch hit for Hammel, and for the second straight day, Szczur delivered a run-scoring hit, this time a two-out RBI single to give the Cubs a 3-1 lead.
“Coming off the bench again, being aggressive and getting another big hit,” Maddon said. “That was a big moment, too, to give us a little bit of breathing room.”
• Once again, Maddon showed his preference for defense. He inserted Javier Baez into the game in the seventh. Baez made two good plays right away, including one when he shifted into short right field and threw out Mitch Moreland on a groundout.
• The best defensive move may have come in the ninth, when Maddon moved Jason Heyward from center field to right. The first batter of the inning, Rougned Odor, hit the ball to right. Heyward fought off the sun and made a catch that was anything but routine.
After Ian Desmond grounded back to closer Hector Rondon (15th save), Adrian Beltre ended the game by flying to Heyward, who squinted and shaded and finally made the game-ending catch in what is probably the toughest sun field in baseball.
“I feel like the sun is undefeated, man,” Heyward said. “So you just try to be in the right spot at the right time and use the little bit of instincts that are going to help you. After that, just hope.”
Heyward added that Odor's ball was “the second-hardest I've had with the sun. I actually saw it go in (the glove). I had one I didn't see go in. It was a tough catch. Glad I caught it.”
“You can't underrate or underestimate how difficult those plays are,” Maddon said. “If you want to go out there and stand out there and take a picture and look up in there, it's really impressive what he's done catching those two balls.”
• The Cubs under Maddon have not been a team big on defensive shifting because Maddon says the opportunities don't often present themselves in the National League and the NL Central. But against the American League's Rangers, the Cubs went into shift mode for the first two games of this series, and it paid off both days
“Back to the American League lineup, some really heavy pull hitters out there,” Maddon said of the Rangers. “There you go.”
The Cubs did just enough on this day when the wind was blowing in strongly from right field. Anthony Rizzo brought the Cubs back from a 1-0 deficit in the third with a 2-run double to right against tough starting pitcher Yu Darvish.
But in the end, Maddon wanted to talk about pitching and defense. The Cubs have beaten the Rangers twice with a combined 11 hits.
“You can only do that if you pitch well and catch the ball,” he said. “That's the only way you can do it. We hit some balls really hard.
“When that wind is blowing in, we've talked about the ballpark. The ballpark really plays in two different ways. Today was the way where it's more pitcher-defense-oriented. We took advantage of that.”