Murphy bashing Cubs’ title hopes
There was the infamous goat in 1945. That black cat in 1969 Steve Bartman in 2003. Today, that Chicago Cubs curse just happens to be Daniel Murphy, who’s personally trying to extend their torturous history.
The New York Mets, 4-1 win- ners behind Murphy’s latest heroics, are two victories away from shattering the Cubs’ dream season, taking a 2-0 lead in the National League Championship Series.
The Cubs have gone 70 years since winning the pennant, 107 years since winning the World Series and now find themselves facing yet another historical obstacle.
Just once since the NLCS went to a best-of-seven format has a team overcome a 2-0 deficit — 1985, when the St. Louis Cardi-
nals won four consecutive games against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The series resumes Tuesday at Wrigley Field, and for the Cubs to reach the World Series they’ll have to beat the Mets four times in five games while facing the game’s best young pitching staff. Good luck, fellas. The Cubs can curse the Mets’ young stable of starting pitchers all they want, but there’s no man more responsible for their predicament than Murphy, who shares the same name of that goat that was banned from Wrigley during the 1945 World Series, if you’re looking for irony.
Come on, you wouldn’t expect anything less, would you?
Murphy is turning this postseason into a free agent showcase, hitting a first-inning home run that virtually iced the game before fans could buy their first hot chocolate, in a game that started with a 45-degree temperature and dropped into the 30s.
Murphy, who hit three homers with five RBI and scored five runs in the Mets’ NL Division Series win against the Dodgers, isn’t cooling off.
The dude homered for the fifth time in seven postseason games, including four consecutive games, tying Mike Piazza for the most postseason homers in franchise history.
“You know Mike Piazza is an all-time great with the Mets,” Murphy said after Game 2. “To have my name mentioned in that sentence is a very humbling experience.”
How stunning is Murphy’s power surge?
He has never hit five home runs in a single month during his career, and he finished with a career-high 14 this season.
You want more strange-buttrue fun facts?
Four of his five homers were hit off the pitchers who likely will finish 1-2-3 in this year’s National League Cy Young balloting: two off Clayton Kershaw and one off Zack Greinke of the Dodgers, and one off Cubs ace Jake Arrieta, who had the greatest second half in major league history.
Murphy is the first player in history, according to Elias Sports Bureau, to hit at least three postseason homers off pitchers with at least 15 victories and a sub-2.50 ERA during the regular season.
Perhaps no one watching the latest proceedings was more stunned than Arrieta, who was 12-0 with a 1.18 ERA in his last 16 starts on the road.
This is a guy had given up only two homers and six runs in the first inning of his 33 regular-season starts this year and hadn’t even given up a first-inning run since May 29.
Arrieta hasn’t given up three runs in the first inning since July 30, 2010, spanning 123 starts.
Yet, the Mets treated him as if they were facing a September call-up, with their first three batters producing a homer and three runs.
Arrieta, realizing he was facing the hottest hitter on the planet, threw a first-pitch 95-mph fast- ball past Murphy in the first. Arrieta came back with an 88-mph slider, and held his breath, then Murphy hit the ball into the right-field upper deck. Foul. Arrieta just missed on an 0-2 slider and came back with an 80mph curveball. He could only watch Murphy’s soaring shot into the right-field upper deck. This time? Fair. The Mets had a 3-0 lead, and the game was already over, except for the final lines in the box score, with rookie Noah Syndergaard refusing to give the Cubs any crazy thoughts of a comeback.
Syndergaard, pitching on two days’ rest after a relief stint in Game 5 of the NL Division Series, showed little sign of fatigue.
He overpowered the Cubs with his 99-mph fastball, leaving them flailing away with his changeup and curveball. Syndergaard permitted just one hit and two baserunners through five innings, before finally running out of gas with two outs in the sixth.
Just as well. In this series, no one’s upstaging Murphy.
“He likes to be on the big stage,” Mets manager Collins said. “Sometimes on this team, you can get overshadowed by all the stars that are here. Dan Murphy has been that one steady guy that you look up, he plays hard.”
Only now, everyone’s looking up and seeing just how far he’s hitting that ball into the seats.