The Cubs Way

by Tom Verducci

  Tomlin had made a late-season adjustment with his curveball to turn it into a more effective weapon. He used to throw his curveball with a true overhand delivery that caused him to tilt his head to the first-base side to allow his arm and hand to reach that high spot of his release. By moving his head to the side and reaching up, Tomlin gave hitters an early look at how the curve “popped up” out of his hand at release. (The upward motion of the ball out of the hand is a giveaway that a curveball is coming; fastballs come out of the hand straight.)

  In mid-August, Tomlin revamped his throwing motion to create a lower release point while keeping his head on a direct line to the plate. The change eliminated the “giveaway” that the pitch was a curveball. He now released his fastball and curveball out of virtually the same release spot and without that “popping up” action on the curve. The change brought another benefit: Tomlin increased the spin rate on his curveball from 2,720 revolutions per minute to 2,855, gaining more bite on the pitch. His curveball usage spiked from 15 percent in the regular season to 35 percent in the postseason, heading into Game 6.

  Still, the Cubs held the decided pitching advantage for Game 6. Tomlin, despite the adjustment he made on his curveball, was 32 years old, the longest-tenured player with Cleveland, and still had yet to establish much of a footprint in the majors. A former 19th-round draft pick in 2006, Tomlin had made 109 starts in the majors and 108 starts in the minors, all in the Cleveland organization. His career ERA of 4.58 was the third-worst in franchise history among pitchers with 100 starts, behind only Dave Burba (4.65) and Roberto Hernandez (4.64). Tomlin would be starting on three days’ rest for only the second time in his career. The only other time he started on short rest occurred six years earlier.

  Maddon gave the ball to Jake Arrieta, the 2015 Cy Young Award winner and owner of the lowest career ERA by a Cubs starter since the live ball era began in 1920 (2.52 in 98 starts). Arrieta had the benefit of extra rest over Tomlin’s short rest—five days to three days—a condition that suited him well. Arrieta was 24–6 over the previous two regular seasons with more than the standard four days of rest.

  For most of the year—22 of 33 starts entering the World Series—Arrieta threw to catcher Miguel Montero. But in the World Series, fearful of Cleveland’s speed on the bases, Maddon started the strong-armed rookie, Contreras, over Montero and David Ross in both of Arrieta’s starts.

  “With Jake, Jake’s not really good at dotting up the ball,” Maddon said, referring to how Arrieta relied more on power and movement than precision. “That’s Ross’s strength, if he’s got a pitcher he can orchestrate. I think you just catch Jake. And Jake, when he’s good, it’s not as if he’s grabbing edges all the time. Jake is going to get weak contact from movement or swing-and-miss in the zone because his ball moves so much.

  “You don’t need that orchestrating catcher dotting up pitches. You just need somebody to receive it, be athletic. To this point, I think Willson has acted as a deterrent to running, and that’s a big part of their game—not that Rossy can’t.

  “Jake’s Jake. Jake’s set in his ways pretty solidly. He is who he is. To get him to game-plan in a way that’s different from what he believes is very difficult. I’m just going to keep a close eye on Jake. He normally doesn’t get bludgeoned. It’s just the walk that shows up.”

  Calling balls and strikes was Joe West, an umpire known among players for adjusting his strike zone depending on if the pitcher, catcher, or manager dared question his calls. Arrieta had started two games in his career with West behind the plate, and was 1–0 with a 2.08 ERA in those games. He knew, more than with any other umpire, you show not the least bit of aggressive body language if you felt that West missed a call. “Just get the ball back and move on,” Arrieta said.

  Maddon’s pitching plan was to ride Arrieta as long as he could, use Montgomery as his first option out of the bullpen, and close the game with Chapman, who had one day off after throwing a career-high 42 pitches in Game 5.

  “I haven’t seen him yet, but he was giggly on the airplane flying here,” Maddon said of Chapman. “He was very good walking on the plane. Guys like that you just read their face. If he’s happy, he’s good.”

  Then Maddon would utter what would be the most important—and controversial—strategic element of the night:

  “Chapman, I think, is capable of one-plus [innings] again tonight.”

  —

  The first curveball Tomlin threw, with his seventh pitch of the game, dropped into the strike zone against Kris Bryant. It ran the count to 0-and-2. The pitch moved Tomlin one strike away from a one-two-three first inning. Why not throw another curveball? Tomlin did, but this curveball was an ugly one. The pitch had no side-to-side break to it and little drop. It just floated, thigh-high, on the inside half of the plate.

  “My favorite pitch,” Bryant said.

  He smashed it into the leftfield seats for a 1–0 Chicago lead.

  “Maybe the biggest swing the whole postseason,” Hoyer said. “It’s certainly one of the biggest. That place was so loud, it’s an 0-and-2 count, they’re about to go one-two-three, and then Kris hits the home run and we score two more runs. Even at the time it felt like the biggest moment of the game, because early on you felt like the game could start to go their way if they got any momentum.”

  Rizzo, the next batter, whacked a changeup for a single. Tomlin tried another curveball to Zobrist, but it was another ugly hanger, and Zobrist drilled that one for a single. Tomlin quickly lost confidence in his best pitch. He scrambled to come up with another plan. He threw nine straight cut fastballs, one of which Russell lofted toward rightfield for what should have been the third out. Centerfielder Tyler Naquin, however, inexplicably took his eyes off the ball to look for rightfielder Lonnie Chisenhall. It was an inexcusable violation of the cardinal rule of playing centerfield: the centerfielder has priority on all balls within his range. Naquin turned passive and stopped. The ball fell between them. Two runs scored.

  The Cubs handed Arrieta a 3–0 lead before he even threw his first pitch. How important was that, in their second elimination game, this one on the road? Arrieta was 46–5 over the previous three years when Chicago gave him three runs with which to work. He would get more.

  Schwarber walked to start the third. After Bryant flied out, Rizzo rapped another sloppy curve to centerfield for a single. By then it was clear: Tomlin was pitching without his best weapon. He threw only seven curveballs in all. Three were balls, one was the called strike to Bryant, and against the rest the Cubs went 3-for-3 when they chose to swing at his hooks. Tomlin tried a fastball to Zobrist, but Zobrist jumped on that for a single that loaded the bases.

  Cleveland manager Terry Francona had seen enough. He went to the mound to remove Tomlin and replace him with Dan Otero. Mallee called over Russell, the next batter, for a quick scouting report on the sinkerball pitcher.

  “He’s going to run a couple of those two-seamers on you to try to get the double play,” Mallee told him. “Make sure you get him in the [strike] zone.”

  A right-handed sinkerball pitcher relies on movement to both sides of the plate to induce contact toward either end of a right-hander’s bat: tailing inside toward the handle of the bat, or, starting off the plate and tailing back toward the end of the bat. It’s a barrel-averse pitch, designed for weak contact. The first sinker ran inside, off the plate. Russell didn’t bite. He took it for a ball. The next sinker was on the inside corner, but down, and a keen-eyed Russell took that one, too.

  Tremendous discipline earned Russell a 2-and-0 count with the bases loaded, a nightmare for Otero that forced him into the zone with his next sinker. This one arrived over the heart of the plate, thigh-high. Russell drove it over the wall in centerfield for a grand slam. It was only the third inning, the Cubs led 7–0, and Russell already had tied a World Series record with six runs batted in. On his own “life raft” without protection in the lineup, Russell surely did “catch something,” as Maddon hoped. (The three b
atters behind him, Contreras, Heyward, and Baez, continued to struggle, going 1-for-11.)

  A stalwart Arrieta took the ball into the sixth inning, striking out nine batters and putting him in line for his second World Series win. The plan Maddon gave him in the cafeteria on the first day of spring training in Mesa—shave innings from his season workload in order to be strong through the World Series—paid dividends. Here it was November 1 and Arrieta hit 97 miles per hour with his fastball, a velocity he had not reached since August 12, the only other time all year he threw that hard. Adrenaline likely helped the cause, as well. Arrieta, the creature of very specific habits on game days, found himself out of sorts for Game 6.

  “The whole day just grinds on you,” Arrieta said. “Everywhere you go, everywhere you turn, all you hear about is the game. It’s like I can’t wait to get to the park to hit the weight room and start my routine and start sweating. And then the game isn’t a seven o’clock game. It’s an eight o’clock game. So you wait even longer.

  “I’m telling you, it wears on you. When I was on the mound, I was jittery. The ball was in my hands and I was jittery, just from the emotions and all the noise around you all day long. I had to calm myself out there. It’s not easy.”

  “Jittery” would be a good word to capture how the endgame turned out for the Cubs and Maddon. Montgomery, as planned, was the first reliever into the game once Arrieta departed. He stumbled a bit in the seventh when he walked Roberto Perez, Cleveland’s ninth-place hitter. Maddon looked at his lineup card. If he was going to use Chapman, he wanted him facing the heart of the Cleveland lineup. So he ordered Chapman to start getting loose, even though Chicago held a 7–2 lead and it was only the seventh inning.

  Montgomery recovered to get Carlos Santana on a fly ball. But when Jason Kipnis followed with a single, that was enough for Maddon. He called for Chapman. He had said before the game that he thought he could use Chapman for “one-plus” innings, but this was a monumental stretch—with seven outs to go and a five-run lead.

  “I had actually honestly thought about that exact situation to preserve a big enough lead,” Maddon said. “There were two guys on when I brought him in.

  “First and second when Lindor came up. That was a tough situation right there. Two guys on, here comes Lindor, and I don’t want him hitting left-handed. It can’t be Stroppy [Pedro Strop] and it can’t be Ronnie [Hector Rondon].

  “It could have been Montgomery, but again, it’s an elimination game so you’ve got to think a little bit differently right there, and I’m thinking if we can hold them there and add on, I can get him out. That’s exactly what I thought.

  “The Chapman situation specifically, if we don’t hold it right there he’s pitching in the eighth plus another inning with a lot more stress on him. Part of the plan for me was hold the lead, and hopefully augment it, and get his ass out of there.”

  Chapman retired Lindor on a grounder, a play in which the original safe call at first base was overturned by replay. In the eighth, Chapman worked around a single when Baez turned a spectacular double play, catching a poor feed at his ankles and throwing on the run with a low release. Chapman had thrown 15 pitches, two days after getting extended to 42 pitches. Would Maddon preserve him for Game 7 by taking him out and trusting some combination of Strop, Rondon, Travis Wood, and Justin Grimm to get the final three outs before five runs scored? The answer was an emphatic “no.”

  “I empathize with him,” coach Mike Borzello said. “It’s an elimination game in the World Series. If anything really strange happens in the ninth inning, and you’ve taken out your best pitcher because you’re starting to manage the next game, and you lose? I can’t imagine many things that would be harder to live with as a manager.”

  With two outs in the top of the ninth, Bryant singled to leftfield, his fifth hit in seven at-bats since that mood-altering homer off Trevor Bauer in Game 5. Rizzo, still smoking-hot since he picked up Szczur’s bat, then crushed an 0-and-1 changeup from Mike Clevinger into the rightfield seats. Now the score was 9–2. Now the other relievers could be asked to get three outs before seven runs scored. But after the home run, neither Maddon nor Bosio made a move to the dugout phone to call the bullpen to get someone warm. Instead, they stood side by side in the dugout debating what to do. Bosio was in favor of getting Chapman out of the game. Maddon wasn’t so sure.

  “I’m still not comfortable,” Maddon told him.

  Bosio told Maddon that Chapman, with 15 pitches, would be in fine shape to pitch in Game 7 if he removed him now. He told Maddon that 92 percent of Chapman’s saves were “in the 20-pitch window, so this is nothing for him at this point.”

  Bosio advocated for a pitching change.

  “We’ve got plenty of guys to match up against them in the ninth,” he said.

  Maddon finally agreed. The next thing they needed to do was decide who should replace Chapman. Who was due up for the Indians? The bottom three hitters, all right-handed: Brandon Guyer, Rajai Davis, and Perez. Who could warm up the quickest? Strop, Rondon, or somebody else? Did they want a left-hander to be ready when the lineup reached Kipnis and Lindor? That would mean getting Wood ready, too. The conversation seemed to go on forever.

  “It did,” Maddon admitted, and then he recalled the ambiguity that took place in their conversation. “It was like, ‘Who do you get up? Strop and Rondon?’ And somebody else I think.

  “ ‘Can we get him up and get him in?’

  “ ‘Does he have enough time?’

  “ ‘Do we leave Chappy out there longer?’

  “ ‘No, let’s get him in there. Just get them ready as quickly as we can.’ ”

  Complicating Maddon’s thoughts about rushing a reliever into the game was a scenario he remembered from the Division Series against the Giants.

  “There was a time when Chappy didn’t have enough time to warm up and we got him in and it was in San Francisco,” he said. “And he did not pitch well in that one and he was upset about it. I did not want to do that to the next guy, not have him warmed up enough, then bring him out there and something bad happens.

  “So I decided let [Chapman] face one guy, and we’ll be ready by then. I thought with that kind of a lead, one guy, get him out, and move on from there. And that’s what we did.”

  As Maddon and Bosio decided what to do, Zobrist drew a two-out walk. Finally, as Russell grounded out, Strop started throwing in the bullpen. Clevinger threw eight more pitches after Rizzo hit the home run, but because Maddon and Bosio debated what to do, Strop didn’t have enough time to get ready to start the bottom of the ninth. Maddon had no choice but to send Chapman back to the mound to face at least one more batter. That’s how his closer came to throw five more pitches (Chapman walked Guyer) with a seven-run lead.

  Strop gave up a run-scoring single before Wood retired Kipnis on a pop fly for the final out of what became one of the more nerve-racking 9–3 wins in memory. Maddon’s use of Chapman was the talk of the clubhouse after the game.

  Rizzo, for instance, when asked if he tried to think along with Maddon in anticipation of his moves, replied, “No, I gave up a long time ago. But you know, [Reds first baseman] Joey Votto told me a while ago that the more Chappy pitches the stronger he gets. I’ve seen it.”

  Said Chapman, who had thrown 62 pitches in the past three days, through a translator, “I do feel stronger the more I pitch. I can’t say if that is actually the case, but I do feel stronger.”

  Chapman did not complain that night about the way Maddon used him, though he would do exactly that one month later on a conference call after signing a five-year, $86-million contract with the New York Yankees.

  “Personally, I don’t agree with the way he used me, but he is the manager and he has the strategy,” Chapman said during the conference call. “My job is to be ready, to be ready to pitch, however that is, however many innings that is. I need to be ready for that. I need to go in and do my job.

  “There were a couple of games, but the o
ne I can point to is Game 6. The game was open and I don’t think he needed to [leave] me in the ninth. The important game was going to be Game 7 because we had that game almost won. The next day I came in tired.”

  The next day, with a night to sleep on it, Maddon admitted he erred in not getting a reliever warm on a standby basis even before Rizzo hit the home run. It would have saved Chapman from going back to the mound for the ninth, warming up for a third time on the game mound, and throwing five additional pitches. A few hours before Game 7, sitting in his office, Maddon said, “The mistake I made was not having somebody warming up for the top of the ninth, in case we did score the two points and just get him out. So he was forced to throw a couple of extra pitches to get Stroppy ready.

  “But otherwise, I saw no other way. I saw no other way with Lindor and Napoli coming up—just based on who I wanted on those guys. To me there was no other way to do that.”

  In two games over three days, Chapman had thrown 62 pitches, faced 15 batters and had pitched, sat down for a half inning, and returned for the next inning four times—a rarity for him to do even once in the regular season. Maddon considered the status and strength of Chapman for Game 7, the most anticipated game in baseball history. Surrounded by his totems—the dark chocolate, the pictures of Earl Weaver, Dick Howser, and Chuck Tanner, the lineup card with its personal necrology and marginalia, the hat that belonged to his deceased father—Maddon hoped for the best.

  “I believe he’s going to be fine tonight,” Maddon said. “I do.”

  Just before Dexter Fowler left the dugout to take the first at-bat of Game 7, he made sure to stop by Joe Maddon for their usual pregame ritual.

  “You go, we go!” Maddon cackled, and then the two of them intertwined the fingers of their right hands, and quickly pulled them back to mimic an explosion. Both of them laughed. Maddon estimated they had done it “90 percent of the time” at the start of games in 2016.