by Tom Verducci
“I was like, ‘Man, that’s probably all the emotions and being physically exhausted after a game like that,’ ” he said.
His next start was Game 3 of the Division Series against St. Louis, with the series tied at one game apiece. By then he knew that the fatigue he felt late in the game in Pittsburgh remained an issue. When he played long toss in between starts he knew the same explosiveness he had throughout the regular season no longer was there. He told himself, Okay, I’m going to have to grind this one out and find a way to win this game.
He did grind out a win, lasting only 52⁄3 innings and yielding four runs for the first time since June. The Cubs’ hitters bailed him out with six home runs.
The next night Maddon used eight pitchers to win a nine-inning game—only the second time it happened in postseason history (Don Mattingly of the Dodgers did it in 2014), and the first time for a series clincher. The Cubs had been playing baseball at the corner of Clark and Addison for 100 seasons, and this was the first time they won a postseason-clinching game at the Friendly Confines.
Arrieta and the Cubs ran out of gas against the New York Mets in the NLCS. A weary Arrieta gave up four runs again, this time in Game 2, as his innings count for the season hit 2482⁄3—72 more innings than the previous year. New York swept Chicago, holding the Cubs to eight runs and a .164 batting average in the four games.
When it was over, Maddon gathered his team in the ratty old shoebox of a clubhouse—for the last time before it would be replaced with the spacious, sparkling new digs.
“Listen,” he told them, “go ahead and lose hard for 30 minutes, like we always do, then let’s move along and really understand and celebrate what we accomplished this year.”
A five-time fifth-place team made it to within four wins of the World Series under a manager working his first season with the club. Three of Epstein’s four pillars made their major league debut in 2015: Bryant, Russell, and Schwarber. The first year of an elaborate run-prevention infrastructure showed enormous gains in the second half of the season. The team won its first playoff clincher in the history of ancient Wrigley Field. Before the Cubs scattered to their homes, Maddon made sure they understood not just what they accomplished, but also what still was to come.
“For me personally, I walked in the door not really knowing anybody in Arizona, when we got there in February, and how we built relationships and created a culture within one year is pretty spectacular within the clubhouse,” Maddon said. “I mentioned to them how important it is as we move forward and [when] we go to spring training next year we know exactly what we want to do and how we want to do it. On top of that, our young players have learned how to win on a major league level, which matters. And to get within four games of the World Series in your freshman year is not a bad thing.”
The 2016 season would be the Cubs’ 108th try at winning their next World Series. Every official Major League Baseball has exactly 108 stitches, just as a mala, or a string of Buddhist prayer beads, has exactly 108 beads. Like stitches and beads, the years spent waiting finally would be exactly enough to close the loop.
Elimination game.
The Cubs franchise had played 21 of these win-or-go-home games since its last World Series championship and lost 15 of them. As hard as Tom Ricketts, Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and Joe Maddon worked to change the definition of “That’s Cub,” only one defeat stood between Chicago and the continuation of “the curse.” One more loss would mean the longest wait in sports would carry to a 109th year, and the reputation as “lovable losers” would persist, no matter how great the team’s five-year turnaround had been.
The Cubs brought no momentum into the game. In two nights the Indians had won just as many World Series games at Wrigley Field as the Cubs did in their 101 seasons in the little green jewel of a ballpark. After outscoring all but two major league teams in the regular season, the Chicago offense had gone as cold as Lake Michigan in the middle of January, managing only seven runs in four games. Cleveland pitchers, just as they had done to the hard-hitting Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series, had baffled Chicago hitters with a heavy dose of breaking balls, exposing what had been an overlooked weakness in the 103-win team.
Curveballs in general are hard to hit, especially because they traffic in deception. They often are thrown in the strike zone early in a count as a surprise (your classic get-me-over, first-pitch hook) or out of the strike zone later in the count as a pitch designed to get a hitter to chase it. Major league batters hit .211 against curveballs in 2016—44 points worse than the overall average. The Cubs were far worse than average against the pitch. They hit .201 against curves. Only seven teams fared worse. No team was worse at making contact on curveballs than Chicago (32 percent). Toronto ranked next-to-last (33 percent).
Few teams, however, exploited the Chicago weakness during the season. Only 9 percent of the pitches the Cubs saw in the regular season were curves. The Indians, a team that threw 12 percent curveballs during the regular season, had dialed up the percentage to 19 percent against the Cubs in the World Series. The strategy to spin the Cubs into submission was working splendidly. The Indians could rely on a server full of data to back it up.
“One thing you realize when you study the data,” Indians pitching coach Mickey Callaway said before the game, “is that softer is almost always better than harder. Very few hitters like to hit off-speed better than fastballs. The good thing for us is that all three of our starters have really good curveballs. You don’t see that any more in baseball.”
Chicago figured to see more of the same tricks in Game 5. To win their first World Series title since 1948, the Indians started Trevor Bauer, owner of one of the most ferocious hooks in the game—even though that pitch went AWOL on Bauer in Game 2. Bauer threw 20 curveballs in that game, but only 10 for strikes, only one of which elicited a swing-and-miss.
To Maddon, all this information meant another round of conversations for him with young hitters Javier Baez, Addison Russell, and Kris Bryant about not chasing breaking balls. (The young and equally anxious catcher Willson Contreras was not in the lineup, owing to keeping intact the buddy battery of Jon Lester and David Ross.) Maddon’s conversations with his youngsters, however, were disguised as confidence-boosting pep talks, not serious discussions about mechanics. Maddon even designed his lineup to give a mental jolt to Russell. After batting him eighth in Game 3 and sixth in Game 4, Maddon pushed him to fifth in Game 5.
“I really like normal routine,” Maddon said about the conversations. “There’s nothing I can say to all of a sudden make them not chase a ball in the dirt or whatever. Part of it is psychology. Today that is hitting Addison fifth. He’s a confidence guy. So, by hitting him fifth, I’m showing confidence in him. I’ll reemphasize that when I have a conversation with him. I’ll tell him, ‘Let’s go.’ ”
As for Baez, Maddon said, “We’ve talked to him. This is a kid we were hitting fifth in the last two series because he was on top of everything, and now it’s speeding up on him. We just have to talk to him. If he has one good game, it could flip just like that, one good at-bat. We’ve just got to keep talking to him and get him to settle down a little bit. They are young, man. These are youngsters playing in this.”
Epstein came to Chicago with designs on building the same offensive profile he built in Boston—a relentless attack that wore down pitchers. In Epstein’s nine years as general manager of the Red Sox, his team ranked in the top three teams in the league every year for seeing the most pitches per plate appearance—including at the top of the league six times—and ranked in the top three for runs scored every year but one.
The 2012 version of The Cubs Way, the player development manual, defined the organization’s “Hitting Development Plan” this way:
The core purpose of our hitting program is to develop selectively aggressive hitters who are under control and can drive the ball to any part of the field. Selectiveness and aggressiveness are of equal importance—selec
tive in that they look very specifically for a good pitch to hit, and aggressive in that they swing to do damage when they get their pitch….They will be better clutch hitters by possessing the confidence to wait for their pitch rather than chasing a pitcher’s best pitches early in a count….Selectively aggressive will be more valuable since they drive up pitch counts and get on base more often. By driving up pitch counts, our teams will consistently chase starting pitchers from games and challenge the depth of opposing bullpens. By getting on base more often, our teams will create more opportunities to score runs and win games. For these reasons, it is critical that we remain disciplined in our commitment to develop hitters The Cubs Way.
The 2016 player development manual included the exact same language—that’s how firmly established was the original ideal of the “selectively aggressive” hitter. But the Cubs had lost hold of that ideal in the World Series. The steady stream of spinning pitches from Cleveland pitchers and the anxiety of playing in the World Series caused the young Chicago hitters to abandon their selective nature. Aggressiveness they had in overabundance. It hurt Chicago, too, that Schwarber remained on the bench at Wrigley, still not cleared to play defense.
“We missed him all year,” Maddon said. “Just imagine all year with him. We’re missing that yin and the yang in the lineup with that lefty/righty mix. We don’t have it.”
The way the Cubs were swinging the bats, they figured to need a well-pitched game to avoid the end of their season. Managers typically talk about “all hands on deck” when it comes to their pitching plans in an elimination game. Handing the ball to Jon Lester, however, Maddon saw his plans as much more simple than that.
“Our bullpen, you saw it last night, I thought Montgomery was off a little bit last night,” Maddon said. “Probably a little bit tired. If we use him tonight it must be up and in. I can’t let him warm up, sit down, and warm up again. Same thing with the whole group. I think the whole group needs to be up and in tonight if possible. I think Lester permits that.
“We have to ride Jonny. There’s nobody I can bring out of the bullpen, unless he’s awful, that’s better than him tonight. We’ve got to ride Jonny.”
The emphasis on his starting pitcher ran counter to the dominant trend of the 2016 postseason. Buoyed by the extra off days, managers routinely were asking their best bullpen arms to get more than three outs. Cleveland manager Terry Francona, for instance, had wedged left-hander Andrew Miller into postseason games in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth innings, and Miller had rewarded his confidence without exception.
With Game 4 solidly in Cleveland’s favor—7–1 in the eighth inning—Miller did allow a home run to Dexter Fowler. It was the first run he allowed in 53 days, covering 281⁄3 innings over 20 appearances. Miller loved to work often and, unlike many relievers, didn’t care when his manager used him. At 6-foot-8 with a slingshot delivery, impeccable control, and the willingness to enter a game at any time on short notice, Miller presented hitters with a unique puzzle almost none of them could solve.
“This guy’s a freak,” Maddon said. “There’s nobody like that. The whole group, Cody Allen and Bryan Shaw, are willing to do the same thing. Those three guys together are kind of an anomaly group. Last year we had a mild version with Clayton Richard and Trevor Cahill and Travis Wood. They were all able to do multiple stuff on a moment’s notice. It’s unusual to get guys like that. Multiple innings, very durable, get ready quickly…it’s unusual.”
Before the Indians traded for Miller from the New York Yankees on July 31, Epstein had talked to the Yankees about him. It was a brief conversation. When Yankees general manager Brian Cashman brought up the name of Kyle Schwarber, Epstein told him he was untouchable. So, too, was Baez. The same roadblock occurred when Epstein called the Royals to ask about Wade Davis.
The Cubs were running away with the National League Central at the time, but Epstein, knowing bullpens play a bigger role in the postseason, was determined to add a premium closer. Hector Rondon had pitched well in that role, but Epstein wanted better, and saw the benefit of deploying Rondon and his closer’s stuff in a setup role.
Once the Miller talks went nowhere, Epstein pivoted to another Yankees reliever, Aroldis Chapman. The price for Chapman would be lower than for Miller because of the differences in their contract status. Chapman, a free agent at the end the season, would be a two-month rental. Miller was signed for two more seasons at the below-market price of $9 million per year.
Trading for Chapman, however, would pose a philosophical, if not an ethical, dilemma for Epstein. For five years he predicated his rebuild of the Cubs on finding players of high character who thrived in an environment with like-minded, upstanding human beings. Chapman tested the resolve of that position.
Around 11 p.m. on October 30, 2015, more than a dozen police officers responded to a call of a domestic disturbance at a house in Davie, Florida. According to the incident report they filed, a woman identified as Chapman’s girlfriend said Chapman choked her, though Chapman, then a member of the Cincinnati Reds, said he used two fingers to poke her on the left shoulder. The girlfriend ran outside the house and hid behind bushes, where she called law-enforcement officials. Chapman went alone to his garage, entered his Land Rover through the passenger side door, sat down, punched the window with his left hand, and pulled a loaded gun from the glove compartment. Chapman, according to the report, then fired eight shots in the garage. A Davie police department spokesman said no charges were filed against Chapman because of “insufficient evidence,” which included conflicting stories, no cooperating witnesses, and no physical injuries.
Yahoo! broke the news of the disturbance on December 7 during the Major League Baseball winter meetings. At the time the Los Angeles Dodgers, who already boasted Kenley Jansen as a top closer, were close to acquiring Chapman in a trade with the Reds, but those talks immediately ground to a halt. Said one baseball source at the time, “After the [terrorist] shootings in San Bernardino just happened, there was no way the Dodgers were going to deal with Chapman and a gun issue in Los Angeles.”
Said another source familiar with the Dodgers’ plans, “I was told they never were going to keep him in the first place. They were going to spin him for something else they wanted. But they were worried after the incident that his value was down, so they walked away.”
The Yankees, however, walked into what they saw as an opportunity. Chapman, because of the public relations fallout and the possibility of a suspension, was damaged goods. New York obtained Chapman for a modest package of prospects, with far less value than Chapman would have commanded before the incident. The Yankees did so knowing that Chapman might face discipline from a newly negotiated Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse policy between the owners and the players. Chapman did become the first player disciplined under that policy. On March 1, 2016, commissioner Rob Manfred suspended Chapman for the first 30 games of the season. Manfred wrote that he found Chapman’s “acknowledged conduct to be inappropriate under the negotiated policy, particularly his use of a firearm and the impact of that behavior on his partner.”
Almost five months later, Epstein needed Chapman. He reached an agreement with New York general manager Brian Cashman to trade pitcher Adam Warren and three prospects for Chapman. The package Epstein negotiated included 19-year-old infielder Gleyber Torres, one of the top prospects in the game. Epstein insisted on one condition before giving his final agreement on the deal: he asked Cashman for permission for him and Ricketts to speak to Chapman. Epstein said they needed to hear contrition about the incident from Chapman, and they wanted to spell out to him the standard of behavior they expected from all Cubs players. Only if they were satisfied, Epstein said, would the deal be completed. Cashman agreed. A conference call was arranged July 24 with Epstein, Ricketts, Chapman, and Barry Praver, Chapman’s agent.
Ricketts told Chapman, “Look, Aroldis, I tell all the players this in spring training and it’s important you hear it and I need t
o hear from you on this: we expect our players to behave. We hold our players to a very high standard for their behavior off the field. And we need to know you can meet that standard.”
Chapman said he understood. Epstein and Ricketts were satisfied by what they regarded as his contrition and sincerity. Epstein said he found Chapman “really heartfelt.” The trade was announced the next day. It was not well received, particularly when Chapman, in words translated by Cubs coach Henry Blanco, said in his initial news conference with Chicago reporters that he could not recall the details of the conference call with Epstein and Ricketts on account of being sleepy then. Maybe something had been lost in translation, but it was far from the “really heartfelt” emotion Epstein had ascribed to Chapman.
The pitcher a bit later clarified his comments in an interview with ESPN, a transcript of which the team’s media relations department made available. In that conversation about the incident, the pitcher said, “I’ve grown tremendously from that time. I’m with my girlfriend still, with the family, and I feel that I have absolutely changed as a person. I’m working to be a better person. And now that I remember because they just asked me in the previous press conference what the owners asked me, one of the things they did ask me was about being a better person and being a better neighbor to people. And that’s something that I think that I am now, much more so.”
Chicago had fallen in love with this Cubs team. It wasn’t just that they were winning, but also that they were winning with a likable collection of players—a core group of position players that largely was homegrown and a pitching staff populated largely by imported pitchers who raised their game once they joined the team. Now Epstein was introducing in midseason a two-month rental who brought the notoriety of a domestic disturbance and gunplay. If you played out the scenario to what the Cubs had in mind, what Ross called “the Holy Grail of championships” would culminate with the disgraced Chapman getting the final out in what otherwise would be the biggest, most historic feel-good title moment in sports.