Afrigather CLEVELAND — For the second consecutive evening, a sacrifice fly produced the Chicago Cubs’ solely run.
The dismal manufacturing once more didn’t give them a lot of an opportunity in Wednesday’s 6-1 loss to the Cleveland Guardians, one of the best crew in baseball. Whereas the Cubs held their very own over the past three days, they should discover methods to win towards good groups.
The Cubs (59-63) had been swept in a sequence of a minimum of three video games for the primary time this season regardless of holding a lead in every contest towards the Guardians. Coming into the sequence, the Cubs had been 41-18 when scoring first. This marked the primary such sweep for the reason that devastating three-game sweep at Atlanta final September.
“I imply, it’s disappointing,” supervisor Craig Counsell stated. “I believed we performed two fairly good video games the primary two days. In the present day I believe offensively we didn’t do a great job. We didn’t do sufficient as we speak. And that’s disappointing. That may be a good baseball crew, for certain. They bought pretty much as good a report as anyone in baseball proper now, however getting swept is not any good.”
The Cubs have tried to keep up perspective with 40 video games to go. However the process in entrance of them solely will get more durable because the variety of video games remaining continues to dwindle. Additional complicating the Cubs’ efforts to make a transfer up the Nationwide League wild-card standings is the shortage of tiebreaker benefit over the groups they’re chasing. The Cubs, at the moment 5 1/2 video games out of a wild card spot, don’t maintain the tiebreaker of the groups forward of them — Atlanta, San Francisco, Cincinnati or St. Louis — which provides one other hurdle to their efforts.
Coming into their sequence in Cleveland, the Cubs had a 9.4% likelihood of constructing the playoffs, based on FanGraphs. These odds dropped to three.8% following the sweep. They haven’t been .500 since June 5 or gotten above that mark since Could 28.
“I imply, .500 is a pleasant quantity to be above, it means you’re successful greater than you’re shedding,” stated right-hander Jameson Taillon, who allowed 4 runs in six innings throughout Wednesday’s loss. “However all that issues is the place you’re at within the standings and who’s in entrance of you. We had been positively at one level, fairly far underneath it, and we’re clawing again, and I really feel like that’s an indication that we’ve been taking part in quite a bit higher baseball.
“However misplaced three, now now we have to punch again, and it appears like that’s type of been the story of the season. So hopefully we will punch again and never flip these three into one thing larger.”
That’s a part of what makes the Cubs’ present place so irritating. The group can level to how they performed in April after they had been seven video games over .500 within the month, however that has turn out to be the anomaly relatively than their efficiency over the past 3 1/2 months. They’re working out of time to vary that.
“It doesn’t actually matter the place we’re at, like, now we have to offer the identical effort each single day, and everybody has to do their job,” Taillon stated. “So I’m conscious of the place we’re and who’s in entrance of us and what which means and the urgency. However I really feel like most of us present up each day making an attempt to get higher, making an attempt to organize, making an attempt to win a ball recreation, pressing, no matter the place we’re at. So yeah, it’s time to make some noise and simply play our greatest ball.”
