CHICAGO — Theo Epstein has experience running baseball operations for a club that rallied from 0-3 down in an LCS to beat a New York team and end a curse.
But the 2004 Yankees ran out of starting pitching to blow that ALCS. The 2015 Mets never seem to run out of starting pitching. It is like expecting an octopus to run out of tentacles.
So, you know, good luck to the Cubs trying to construct a four-game winning streak against Steven Matz, Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom. It is not impossible. But Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez are not choices for Terry Collins.
“Anything is possible,” pitching coach Dan Warthen said. “But we certainly like our chances.”
The Yankees only had 1½ trustworthy starters in 2004 — Mike Mussina and Jon Lieber — when Epstein was the Red Sox GM. Orlando Hernandez broke down during the ALCS.
Esteban Loaiza already had been evicted from the rotation. And Joe Torre faced the horrible choice of Brown or Vazquez for Game 7. Brown started, both pitched miserably and those Idiot Red Sox came all the way back to win the pennant en route to their first championship since 1918.
Epstein is now another cursed franchise’s top baseball executive, the Cubs’ president of baseball operations, and — with the Mets’ 5-2 triumph in Game 3 — he has watched Harvey, Syndergaard and deGrom hold Chicago to five runs in 20 ¹/₃ innings as the Mets have won the first three NLCS games.
“I think they are hitting on all cylinders, right now,” Warthen said of his starters.
Cubs manager Joe Maddon, in attempts to simplify the challenge, has insisted his club will focus on only Game 4, though he mentioned it “would be interesting” if they could win Wednesday’s contest to have Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta in Games 5 and 6. But — like the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke in the division series — the Mets already have found a way to beat the Cubs’ aces in the NLCS. Mainly because the Mets’ aces have been better.
Matt HarveyCharles Wenzelberg“It comes down to we have to pitch equally well,” Maddon said. “But it is not easy.”
No, it defines difficult — break through against the Mets’ fearsome foursome or remain title-less since 1908.
Cubs officials believed returning to, of all things, a warmer Chicago from chilly New York would awaken their power bats. It did. The temperature was 72 degrees at first pitch and two batters into the bottom of the first, Kyle Schwarber crushed an opposite-field homer to left. Jorge Soler, a Cuban who did not start Game 2 in New York because Cubs officials thought he could not perform well in that chill, hit a homer that you knew was gone simply by the thud off the bat.
But both were solo shots, and that is all the Cubs managed in seven innings against deGrom, who now has three starts and three wins in this postseason.
He dominated Game 1 of the division series against the Dodgers, but needed moxie and craft to survive a fleet of base runners in Game 5, yet hold Los Angeles to just two runs in six innings. He was that guy again against the Cubs. DeGrom allowed three hard-hit balls and threw 29 pitches in the first.
But Warthen praised deGrom’s ability to take a deep breath and not be overwhelmed by adversity. Two of his worst starts of the year were against Chicago, and deGrom could have been gone early in NLCS Game 3. However, he stuck to the game plan, namely that swaths of the Cubs lineup are susceptible to off-speed stuff. Degrom usually throws about 65 percent fastballs, but he threw an off-speed pitch on 49 of his 100 pitches Tuesday. After Soler’s homer, deGrom retired the last 11 Cubs he faced, getting better as the game got deeper.
Matz will now try to finish off the Cubs. In their eight postseason games, Matz has the Mets’ worst start, but even that was not a horror show (five innings, three runs). The Cubs have taken just one at-bat (Anthony Rizzo versus Jon Niese) against a Mets lefty in this series, and Warthen thought that could help the rookie southpaw plus “Steve Matz is no slouch.”
Even if he stumbles, the Mets have their three aces behind Matz and collectively the rotation has pitched to a 2.72 postseason ERA. So the offense does not have to carry the club and the bullpen is generally not overexposed. Met starters are averaging 11.78 strikeouts per nine innings, the most ever for any team that played at least four playoff games. That means less balls in play for the defense.
“It’s fun to watch them all pitch, right now,” Warthen said.
Not for the Cubs, who have to figure out how to mount a four-game winning streak against the starting quartet or stay title-less since 1908.
