From a sweep to being swept? Let’s see…
From the high of completing the first sweep of the season, to the low of staring into the abyss of potentially being swept. A tough 48 hours for fans, especially given the manner of Friday’s loss. That awoke the doomers: I saw comments on social media like, “We need this series, we quite literally can’t afford to lose it,” which shows a devastating ignorance of what the word “literally” means. Now the series is lost. But odds are its result won’t matter. Sure the losses do. But they will very likely count in the standings, with exactly the same weight as the wins over the Marlins. After last year, I think people are over-focused on tie-breakers. Which I get. But it was the first time in 27 years they had an impact on Arizona.
So, while it’d certainly have been preferable for the D-backs to have won the series, I’m not going to agonize about it in April. The Cubs are a good team, and likely winners of the NL Central (Fangraphs.com gives them a 55.9% chance of that already), which would render the tiebreaker meaningless. I’d be okay with us winning the final game, to give us a bit of momentum heading into the off-day tomorrow. Merrill Kelly takes the mound, hoping to restart a quality start streak on the mound. It’s weird for him to be tied for the league lead in wins, despite his 5.57 ERA.
However, his numbers are still heavily skewed by that one bad outing in Yankee Stadium. He was left out there to give up nine earned runs in 3.2 innings. But across his other three appearances (all wins), Kelly has a 2.08 ERA. That is perhaps a bit misleading, considering his BABIP in those was .192. But it’s equally true to feel he’s not the below replacement level pitcher you’d think from his bWAR figure. He will need to pitch well against a tough offense: the Cubs OPS+ is now 129, the best in the NL. Our hitters will also need to do better than the one non-Corbin hit managed yesterday as well.