2015 NLDS: the chicago cubs of the north side vs. the st. louis cardinals of st. louis

Cubs

Arrieta starts once, so Cards in 5

glad Maddon got him the CG.

ugh

arrieta starts game 3, i guess? i'm going to be out of cell phone reception for games 1 and 2, emerging just in time to watch arrieta do his thing in game 3. maybe i'll just stay in the woods..

i wouldn't feel too guilty about devil magic happening and beating the cubs, because i'm going to get really sick of watching them in the playoffs for the next several years.

would have liked to see Car Mart vs Arrieta. Maybe we get a 'corrected' Wacha.

The Cubs lineup is terrifying. All signs point to the Cards wringing every bit of offense from their roster.

Devil magic guess- Greg Garcia pinch hit HR.

i'm going to get really sick of watching them in the playoffs for the next several years.

but...but....duuuuuuddeeeeeeee......

what? what??

ooh. oooooooh.

i'm in denial about what has happened and what will happen!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQ0KgvYWEAA2eKa.png

Congrats to Jon Jay on this years annual Matheny playoff roster spot scholarship.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

He's tryna kill me

https://twitter.com/JArrieta34/status/652021903087960066

lester lestered, allowed a single run off 2 base runners and then started dealing and hasn't allowed shit since

and naturally lackey has been no-hitting the cubbies, motherfucking devil magic

piscoteque

has wild card fatigue/rage-spiraling driven you to root for the true enemy of us all

How about those rookie power hitters ;)

A huge zone is probably the worst thing for a rookie power hitter: guys finding success by waiting for their pitch and demolishing it are left with tough-to-hit pitches that they aren't prepared to adjust to. (In part because they're young and not used to that type of adjustment as such, and in part because all of their success is on knowing when a pitch is out of the zone and laying off.) Cuzzi wasn't unfair in how he called that game -- and Lester probably benefited just as much -- but Cards really couldn't have hoped for a better ump tonight.

i don't really want to inspect my feelings too closely, but i was pleased with this result

arrieta's a funny and talented guy; let's see him win three out of five

Not sure if Cardinals fans accept support w/o a money order sent to Darren Wilson's house tbh

fresh squeezins

apparently García had the flu or something similar?

Best we can tell the Cubs were the first team in postseason history to execute 2 squeeze bunts in the same inning - or even the same game. Play-by-play data shows no team with 2 successful SAC bunts with runners on 3rd anyway.

Rondon got stuck in the goddamn bullpen bathroom, apparently http://atmlb.com/1WUZ4tm

alright, finally ready to watch some playoff action, who do we face tonight?? oh.

*runs back into the woods*

cardinal twitter weirdly excited that the wind is blowing out at wrigley. Wacha more likely to give up HRs. Cubs more likely to hit HRs. Not sure how this helps.

at least it will increase our chances of scoring a single run, which counts as a victory of sorts against arrieta

http://i.imgur.com/1KfAxPm.png

looks like arrieta has his cushion

plus his gluteal one

that dude in the window above looks like dax shepard and i just spent 5 minutes googling/trying to remember who dax shepard was

the hell is happening to arrieta right now?

omg he's human

he is no Bumgarner, I see

also, was the organist just playing "Watch What Happens" from Umbrellas of Cherbourg?

he is no Bumgarner, I see
--Van Horn Street

sure he didn't assist bruce bochy in sacrificing children on a satanic altar to win the world series every other year

the hips of timmy. it was all worth it.

there's really not gonna be a need to stick with this game in 47 minutes, right?

definitely human

#signheyward

sadly for baseball's best fans, arrieta being human for one night won't mean fuck-all

Cardinals doing everything possible to refuse to accept the gifts of the baseball gods in this game

Cubs set mlb postseason record with 6 home runs

GRANDY IS DANDY

(oops)

rough one to lose. props to the small bears. crazy to feel like our uber dominant pitching staff is now whittled down to one reliable starter.

Lucky enough to be there last night, and it was electric. There is some sorcery happening. So nice to see a unified club rallying to make the season even greater. Go Cubs go!

boo cubs. boooooo

hm, weird. for all lackey's (profound and legion) faults i never perceived him to be a cheat and i can't recall any accusations that he was

Finally get to watch some of this series.

If that was Maddon's call, it likely had nothing to do with the ball and everything to do with Lackey's head.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CRO4RkXWcAEcwGg.png

i haven't seen so many HRs against cardinal pitching in like...3 years. at least

that was sent to michigan lake

hmm, siegrist missed his spot by about 8 feet to rizzo and gave up a HR, and then threw one right down the middle to give up the longest HR of all time to schwarber....yes, he should be left in to keep pitching

statcast says the schwarber HR was only 418 ft?

418 ft before it started coming down.

matheny just pinch hit for randal grichuk with greg garcia.

wtf is even happening

can't wait for that press conference

PICK UP YOUR THIRD BASE COACH PICK UP YOUR THIRD BASE COACH STOP LOOKING AT THE BALL PICK UP YOUR THIRD BASE COA

Runner on third, one out. Matheny orders IBB of Castro. Castro then steals second without a throw, and it's obvious they were just resigned to letting him have it.

another great matheny moment

Ominous half-inning for a team with the Cubs' history--hope they can hold on.

One squeeze attempt too many for Maddon?

Gulp.

This could be interresting, definitively feeling the uh oh in the crowd

congrats, cubs. you steamrolled the cardinals, no doubt about it

first impulse is to blame it on the neverending nightmare carnival ride of injuries this year, but in the end the pitching just fell apart

my fear of yet another dodgers card series is extinguished

First series-clincher in Wrigley ever? That's amazing.

i dunno -- playoffs really underscore the need for a #1 pitcher, and waino just didn't get back in time

what's the deal with wacha, tho?

Cubs earned it. Cards ran out of everything. Too much wishful thinking that injured players were really "back". MM made a few blunders as always but overall Cubs had more of everything. (Go mets!)

Guessing we hear about Wachas shoulder in the next week.

i'm hopeful that wacha's shitty second half was just fatigue and not related to his weird brandon mccarthy arm injury thing. he's 24 years old, pitched 150 innings in 2013 (plus however many playoff innings he threw that year) in his first full professional season, 107 innings in an injury-shortened 2014, and then 181 regular season innings this year. matheny/mozeliak promised that they'd be monitoring his innings all year and looking for opportunities to get him extra rest, but of course they didn't. same deal with carlos martinez, who mysteriously succumbed to an arm injury a few weeks ago. (and same deal with yadi - every year matheny says he's going to be vigilant about getting opportunities for yadi to rest, and then he never does)

i know that the link between innings on young arms and injuries is not 1:1, and i'm not saying that wacha should have been on a strict innings count this year or anything, but it would be nice if they would have followed through on their promises and skipped a few of his starts.

oh well. i told myself before the series that whatever happens, winning 100 games with so many injuries is quite an accomplishment, so...there's that.

it really is!

also alex reyes is a fucking beast, so there's that. but i think yadi is about done as the force we've known him to be

yeah, sadly i agree. :(

First series-clincher in Wrigley ever? That's amazing.

yeah that seems very odd

Onward.

there were no "series clinchers" except the world series itself for a while, and it seems like they've made the playoffs a total of... 6 times since then. (yikes)

84: lost first round (nlcs)
89: ditto
98: ditto
03: won the first round, away
07: out first rd
08: ditto

before 1984, they hadn't made the postseason since 1945. man its easy to forget how brutal cubz life must be

From what I can see, both the Cubs' Series wins (1907/08) were clinched in Detroit.

and wrigley only opened in 1914.

yeah forgot the actual playoffs are so (relatively) recent

I like the cubs' chances in a World Series much more than I like their chances against NY or LA. I'd rather see NY because it would be more entertaining either way tbh.

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/10/13/cubs-fan-using-app-to-play-go-cubs-go-on-st-louis-area-juke-boxes/

touchtunes is a hell of a drug

Schwarber's HR landed on top of the video screen, and they're going to leave it there for the rest of the postseason: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/ct-kyle-schwarber-home-run-ball-20151013-story.html

Christ but it's a great time to be alive

well, get back to me in 36 hours

I haven't followed baseball this closely -- or at all -- since that ball skipped through Leon Durham's legs in the 1984 NLCS.

Kinda digging this right now.

A security guard will escort anyone going up to the top of the video board to service it so it wont be stolen. There will be no 24-hour security.

thank you for that detail, chicago tribune? hey is anyone busy at 2 am tomorrow?

so where is Bartman sitting next Tuesday?

xp how much you want for it

i'll pay 8 american dollars

sheesh man no dice, gotta at least cover expenses - ropes, grappling hook, tranq darts to neutralize security; this would be a serious operation.

is the wind not gonna blow at Wrigley next week?

They put a case around it!

http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/content/wls/images/cms/CRTefluXAAA_mhH.jpg

Russell out for LCS