Can the Cubs charge back v. Brewers?

00:00:03
Speaker 1: Hey, we've got North Side Territory host and the athletics Patrick Mooney joining us right now to talk about the Chicago Cubs trailing to nothing. Well, that's what Philly fans do. Will Cubs fans do that? If they're in trouble in this Game three against the Brewers? How do they fix this? Patrick? I want to start with something like more glass half full, Like how do the Cubs shock the world and come back?

00:00:28
Speaker 2: I have no idea.

00:00:29
Speaker 3: I have a hard time coming on this show and presenting like a credible path forward, Like, yeah, it's professional sports, it's unscripted.

00:00:38
Speaker 2: Crazy things happen.

00:00:40
Speaker 3: But sid If Sharman and I were talking about this on North Side Territory, Like, you go back to the twenty sixteen World Series, the Cubs are down three to one. You got John Lester pitching Game five with a Roldis Chapman waiting to do, you know, superhuman things out of the bullpen.

00:00:58
Speaker 2: Then you have a rating it's not.

00:01:00
Speaker 3: Young Award winner and Jake Arieta lined up for Game six, and then the Major League eer A leader that year, Kyle Hendricks awaiting Game seven, and the Cubs pitching at this point feels almost totally depleted. You saw it in Matthew Boyd going on three days rest, showed it in Minaga clearly is off his game, giving.

00:01:27
Speaker 2: Up way too many home runs.

00:01:31
Speaker 3: Kate Horton is supposed to throw off a mound today at Wrigley Field. They'll see if they can try and push him, if they somehow find a way to advance.

00:01:39
Speaker 2: But I don't know.

00:01:41
Speaker 3: Brewers just totally outplayed the Cubs in every phase of the game in Milwaukee.

00:01:47
Speaker 4: Okay, well that's okay. They don't need to pitch, they just need to score.

00:01:53
Speaker 2: Too. Yeah, right, Can they out hit?

00:01:55
Speaker 4: Can they out hit this? Milwaukee's as as I think somebody said on one show this week, hitting Milwaukee lineup that led the league and run scored.

00:02:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I just watching those games like where like the Brewers just have the best players on the field, the most dynamic pitchers on the mouth.

00:02:19
Speaker 2: And that's what the Brewers do, right. They make teams look.

00:02:22
Speaker 3: Bad, whether it's just their style of play, they're swinging miss stuff. I think even you see it in you know, players coming from other organizations like Andrew Vaughan or Quinn Priester, and all of a sudden something clicks and they're awesome. I think you have fans and other small markets being like, well, if the Brewers can do that, why can't.

00:02:44
Speaker 2: Our team do that?

00:02:45
Speaker 3: And even in Chicago, I think there is some frustration of like the payroll the Cubs have, it should be higher, but it's still way more in the in the Brewers, and there still is this huge gap. And then you have obviously Craig Counsel leaving Milwaukee and the Brewers get better.

00:03:09
Speaker 2: You have players like that.

00:03:11
Speaker 3: And the Bruises have this amazing ability to sort of like get rid of players at the right time and kind of let someone else deal with the huge frage and contract with the player to clients.

00:03:20
Speaker 2: Just just all of that.

00:03:25
Speaker 3: Gives it makes it hard for me to imagine the scenario in which the Cups advance.

00:03:30
Speaker 2: Here.

00:03:32
Speaker 5: I want to talk about Jemison tie On. I mean, I feel like he's been pretty good. I feel like as the three guy or whatever you want to call him, I feel like this is the guy right now that can kind of kickstart this Cub's team to get gone. Talk a little about him and how how good he's been and how they're going to lean on him here a little bit as they're moving forward.

00:03:53
Speaker 3: No, you're right, Sad, I guess I could have started there. Like Jamison is a really good starting point. He's outside of Kate Horton was probably their best pitcher towards the end of the season there as you guys know, just a terrific teammate, leader by example, a very rational person. Teammates, you know, just talk about the example. He sets it in the room. So yeah, you start there. The bullpen, obviously, with all these days off during the series, should be pretty well rested, maybe getting back to Wrigley Field, sparks something, and you know, you've seen these flashes of the club's offense. That's what made these two games even harder to kind of comprehend of, Like they landed the first punch in the first inning, whether it's Michael Bush's lead off home run or Saeya Suzuki's huge swing. I think it was maybe sixteen pitches into Game two. But other than that, it's just been really quiet on the offensive end, and it's not really an anomaly, like this is an awesome offense in the first half, and for a variety of reasons, it just sort of faded in the second half, and now against a higher level of pitching, when the stakes are.

00:05:10
Speaker 2: Even higher, the offense just hasn't come through.

00:05:15
Speaker 4: How did the Cubs and the Cubs fans and maybe even the people on the bench feel about the pitcher ploy that the Brewers pulled last night with Quinn Priester and Aaron Ashby going out there and Priester never actually pitching.

00:05:31
Speaker 2: Ao Suzuki liked the matchup. I guess I don't like.

00:05:36
Speaker 3: That went to me seemed a little bit overthinking it on the Brewer's end. Obviously it worked out and the Cubs kind of let them off the hook there. But it's been kind of funny covering the playoffs here where it seems like the managers from one night to the next or one game to the next go from like genius, idiot genius, like if it works, it was a great call, and if it doesn't, it was a dumb move.

00:06:04
Speaker 4: Tucker, Kyle Tucker, what does what does this version of Kyle Tucker look like somebody that got rushed back after an injury? Does it look like the struggling Kyle Tucker that was pre injury and is their hope that he can be the aircraft carrier that they brought him in to be, and he was for two thirds three quarters of the season.

00:06:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, no doubt, I mean, he was that guy. It is hard to see the Cubs.

00:06:34
Speaker 3: Making the playoffs without him, or maybe they squeak in, but just all the momentum that was created in the first half really was a huge product of his production, his presence, his sense of calm, the example he set in the batter's box.

00:06:52
Speaker 2: Is all around play.

00:06:54
Speaker 3: And we just have not seen that here really for a couple months now in Part two due to whatever happened with his hand, whether it was a subconscious thing or not of just kind of messing with his mechanics or just something was slightly off. And then with a kaff here he's been a dh I don't think there's any expectation that he's going to play the field this series. Stay Suzuki has been more than passable in right field, but obviously that kind of limits you. And I think part of the appeal of Kyle Tucker was that base running, that speed, just the all around contributions he could make to the game.

00:07:35
Speaker 2: And right now he is limited.

00:07:39
Speaker 3: And you saw in the San Diego series a Cubs thought he was getting that timing back and was making good decisions and was kind of just seeing the ball hitting line drives again. That impact, though, just hasn't been here against Milwaukee. And obviously the Brewers have a terrific pitching staff, a very good game planning system, but without Tucker and when picrow Armstrong struggling, it's just it's just a thin lineup.

00:08:12
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00:09:04
Speaker 5: You like that he looks fansom there, he does, he does.

00:09:07
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00:09:14
Speaker 4: Is there a giveaway or something at Wrigley Field tomorrow, because at the end of the Brewers game it wasn't even over. There was a ton of Cubs fans taking the quick trip across the bridge. Is there something that they're rushing too? And does it feel like for Cubs fans that they've been the bigger brother the older brother, and little brother is now gotten taller than them. Does it feel like there's no coming back from this or does it feel like, in a more of a macro sense, not just this series, but no coming back from it and there needs to be wholesale changes in Chicago.

00:09:57
Speaker 3: I would guess that Cubs fans are still probably gonna be skeptical of the Brewers no matter what. Like if the Brewers get rocked against the Dodgers in the NLCS, it's kind of like, you know, whatever they played a week longer but there's no doubt that the Brewers, under Council's leadership, and you were there, Eric hastened the demise of the post twenty sixteen Cubs. They were irritating, they were frustrating. I think Theopsky and Jed Hoyer constantly looked at their roster, Milwaukee's roster and was like, why is Craig Counsel ringing more out of their group than we are out of ours? And you know, it hasn't been just one person or one player. They've been relentless. And I asked Jed Hoyr this before the playoffs started towards end of the season, of like, it does this sort of take you back to your Al East days when you're with the Red Sox and the Rays were coming up. You just kind of have to assume that they're going to win ninety games a year. And I think that's kind of the parallel here for the Cubs. And I think, you know, widespread changes, I don't, I don't think so. I mean that first half earned Jed Hoyer contracts extension and sort of solidified the future of this front office. Craig Council isn't going anywhere, and I think mostly you look at this Cub's team and I think they've sort of gotten what they deserve. Do They haven't really overachieved to a great extent, They certainly haven't underachieved. I think this is a team built to like make the playoffs and be back in the mix next year. And then that's the broader questions are kind of what you're getting at is, you know, sort of like payroll and the willingness to kind of go all in for one season. And obviously this wasn't it. You trade for Kyle Tucker, but you don't sign Alex Bregman. You upgrade the team at the trade deadline, but you don't make that one huge splashy move. And you know they'll whenever this season ends, they'll do their kind of deep dive. But I don't expect them to look at this body of work and be like, we have to make huge changes or totally overhaul our philosophy right or wrong?

00:12:15
Speaker 4: Justin steel still in this rotation. How much does it change? I know there's what ifs and whatever's, And that's to me why they didn't go in on a Max Free. They didn't go in on a Corbyn Burns because they had Justin Steele, they didn't know they had Kate Horton. But if Justin Steele is here for this series, does he make enough of an impact that it could have changed this series?

00:12:44
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know, the Steel injury was so.

00:12:48
Speaker 3: Long ago that I think the Cubs moved on pretty quickly. I think the Horton coming up when Shoda got hurt was huge. But like, clearly the Cubs are an organization that's obsessed with pitch depth and they are constantly acquiring it. Uh, but even that has its limits. And like they went all out to beat the Padres. They pitched, not flawlessly, but they pitched at an extremely high level.

00:13:17
Speaker 2: I think that took something.

00:13:21
Speaker 3: Out of them, and I realized that expectations are lower for starting pitchers now in the playoffs.

00:13:27
Speaker 2: But like, it's just not sustainable.

00:13:29
Speaker 3: If you're getting like, you know, two and two thirds innings, you know, every playoff game, that's just not going to work, especially when you're facing a team that was coming off of buy and has Freddy Peralta pitching game one and lined up if necessary deeper in the series.

00:13:50
Speaker 1: Hey, Patrick, if they are able to truck through and pull off a win or two here, how do you think the team sets up for these next couple games right after Game three with ty On if they're able to pull that off and be priest who never loses. But if they're able to beat him, then what does it look like going forward? Because I think we can all agree at this point the risk to go with Matt Boyd on the short rest was not the right move.

00:14:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Quinn Priester grew up a Cups fan.

00:14:22
Speaker 3: I think he went to some of those twenty sixteen World Series games, so it'll be fun to see him pitch in that environment. I think it comes down to here, like your best players have to be your best players, and you've seen it with the Brewers. I mean, I mean, I need to get Wilson Contreras's breakdown of Williams's home run celebration last night, because that was awesome. I've been to games that American Family Field maybe it's called Miller Park back then, but where like Wilson would blow kisses to the crowd and stuff.

00:14:59
Speaker 2: Like that awesome.

00:15:01
Speaker 3: So, like, I don't know if if Kyle Tucker hits a three run home run, if Pekrow Armstrong hits a three run home run, like it's it's not totally out of the question.

00:15:12
Speaker 2: The Cubs have not. I think their longest losing streak.

00:15:17
Speaker 3: Was three games and then they clinched a playoff spot and went on like a five game losing streak. So this team has been able to like manage series and minimize those down periods.

00:15:28
Speaker 2: I just think like.

00:15:30
Speaker 3: This Brewers team is at another level, and like if they were wearing Yankees or Dodgers uniforms, like we'd be talking would have been talking about them in a totally different context for most of this year.

00:15:44
Speaker 1: Last one, here is the specific pitching setup for Games four and five, just bullpenning chaos.

00:15:53
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's kind of been like that since first pitch of Game one of this NLDS.

00:15:58
Speaker 2: I think you kind of see see where they're at.

00:16:02
Speaker 3: Like the comes to their credit have been like so good at this It's like what Eric was saying earlier of all right, justin steel all star pitcher goes down in April, they just keep progressing. Showa goes down, Kate Horton comes up like they had. Colin Ray was awesome for them on balance this year, Javer Sad gets hurt like maybe the first day of spring training or even before camp officially opens, and you know, they don't really miss him, but when it's so condensed like this, when every pitch matters, it just feels like they're pitching plans are sort.

00:16:43
Speaker 2: Of shredded here.

00:16:44
Speaker 3: I think it's just try and win Wednesday and then worry about Thursday immediately after game three, assuming you have another tomorrow.

00:16:55
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, just thinking even if they're able to slay the Brewers, and for example, they the Dodgers and they're like, we're not really sure with half of our starters for this seven game series, and the Dodgers are like glass now, Snell, I'm as honey, Okay, so yeah, I mean I get it. They're they're missing two guys who are top end starters right now. But that's that's part of the song and dance here, and while they'll continue to build up pitching depth, well, we'll see what happens. Patrick. You did your best to bring a little positivity to the vibes here. But it will be fun. It'll be a fun, raucous Game three at Brickley caotalking you of course, we'll listen to all that you're bringing at the table on North Side Territory too, but have fun out there.

00:17:35
Speaker 2: Thanks, guys appreciate it.