Cubs trying to shake their title hangover
CHICAGO — “There’s only one time to really call a team meeting,” Joe Maddon said Tuesday afternoon at Wrigley Field. “If your best pitcher is pitching the next [game] against a really bad team.”
Hmmm. Really bad team? The Mets are here. So yes.
Your best pitcher? Jose Quintana took the mound for the Cubs. So not quite. Maddon passed on calling the team meeting.
The Cubs won anyway, 8-2, with Quintana (whom the Cubs outbid the Yankees to acquire from the White Sox in July) taming the Mets over seven innings while Robert Gsellman continued his lost season by issuing five walks in four innings. Nevertheless, Maddon’s guys haven’t fully escaped the dilemma that had the manager discussing the value of a meeting.
Welcome to a universe of first world problems the Mets wish they occupied: Championship hangover. September relevance. The sorts of headaches that make this Cubs-Mets series vital for Maddon’s team and therefore give the Mets the opportunity — uncashed, after one try — to help spoil the greatest encore ever.
“I tell everyone, take the positives out of everything to this point, where we are, coming after the greatest championship in sports history,” Cubs f irst baseman Anthony Rizzo said, referring naturally to the Cubs’ 2016 World Series title, the franchise’s first since 1908. “We’re in position to win the division again. I think everyone needs to start rallying around us even more now, because we need it even more. Instead of maybe panicking a little bit.
“This is the time where we’re going to get hot the next three weeks and raise that banner again next year. This is the time.”
Rizzo turned himself into a motivational speaker to account for the Cubs’ lost home weekend, when the Brewers swept them at home to turn the National League Central back into a race. It remained a race even after the Cubs’ thumping of the Mets, as the Cardinals and Brewers both won to remain two and 2 ½ games back, respectively.
There’s no underestimating the mental and physical fatigue these guys must feel after everything since 2015, from, 1) reaching the NL Championship Series that year (and getting swept by the Mets) to, 2) ending the epic drought in last year’s seven-game Fall Classic victory over the Indians to, 3) grinding through this season, in which they owned a 43-45 record at the All-Star break, rallied with a 32-16 stretch and halted a 2-6 funk with this latest win. “It’s there,” Maddon said of the fatigue. “To deny that would be disingenuous on my part. … For the hardcore hardliners that don’t want to hear that, that’s fine. But it’s true. It is part of the human element. It’s part of what we do. And doing that, I’m really proud of our guys.
“Right now, you need to trust your guys more than anything. It’s not time to experiment and try new methods or whatever. Let your guys play and trust them. These are great athletes. It’s a tightly-knit group. The biggest thing I’ve been concerned about all year is rest, the rest component. We’ve talked about that.”
Pro actively resting guys doesn’t prevent injury altogether, and if any doubt lingers about these guys finding their way back to the playoffs, it emanates from health concerns. Jake Arrieta, the Cubs’ best pitcher, is out with a right hamstring injury and hasn’t thrown from a mound yet in his attempt to return. Shortstop Addison Russell has been out since Aug. 3 with plantar fasciitis in his right foot, and he isn’t even running at full speed. Catcher Willson Contreras made his first start in over a month on Tuesday, his right hamstring sufficiently recovered (the Cubs hope).
“It’s great to be in this position. Now we’ve got to figure out how to do it,” the eternal optimist Maddon said. “If we figure out how to do it, we’ve got something going on for next year, too.”
For the rest of us, it will be mighty fun seeing if they can figure it out in time.