Hello, Old Friend(s)

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images

Because the Dodgers finished off the Reds late Wednesday night, the Cubs and Padres will square off at 4:08 PM Central time Thursday. They're the middle course in the final Wild Card feast of the round, starting near the time when the Guardians and Tigers will wrap up and ending (probably) just before the Yankees and Red Sox get underway in the Bronx.

Sunset in Chicago is at 6:30 on Thursday. On an unseasonably warm October afternoon, the game will begin under the last of burning-off clouds and end right as twilight enfolds the city, turning it all those rich hues of purple, orange and blue that make the four-season city such a jewel. The drama of this game will be reflected by nature itself, even though the crowd will all be in shorts instead of sweatshirts.

By the end of the game, those fireworks from Mother Nature will either set the party off like the light rig being run just right at the club, or taunt Cubs fans as they spill angrily out of Wrigley Field, wanting the chill and the crackle of leaves and even the damn rain October usually brings but getting only a defiantly summerish day—one that demands baseball, just when baseball is snatched away from the city for the year.

These feelings—both possible feelings—are extremely familiar to Cubs fans. They're old friends, in all the evocative ways that that phrase falls over us when we hear it. What is an "old friend," after all? It's the warmest and most wonderful thing we have; one of the things that makes life worth living. On the other hand, many of our old friends are now aliens to us, or even enemies. Some of them are still friendly enough, but they've softened into far-off acquaintances, and their memory reminds us of pieces of our past selves that we've lost and want back—or that we regret ever being. 

On The West Wing, the turn-of-century political drama, "an old friend from home" was a code used by the staff when they needed to pull one another out of a meeting for something urgent and private, without the other people they're with knowing anything is amiss. The old friend they're talking about, then, is trouble. It's worry. In some ways, surely, trouble and worry are our oldest and most intimate friends. They're the ones we never get too far from, but we sure wish we could. In "The Sound of Silence," famously, Paul Simon begins by singing, "Hello Darkness, my old friend / I've come to talk with you again." In a song about that onrushing alienation and loneliness we just mentioned above, the first line identifies the one sure pal who never feels far off. Sunset will come right near the last pitch Thursday, and it might well be that 40,000 Cubs fans will feel Darkness at their shoulder by then—but equally, it's possible that Darkness will be splintered and pushed off by the light and sound and heat of a team clinching something that really counts and making their next step toward their ultimate goal.

Other teams' fan bases know this duality a bit better, in that they've spent more time with it. Cubs fans have, in the grand scheme of things, relatively little experience waiting out a workday with an eye on the clock and a gathering tightness in their chest, both exhilarated and terrified. A win-or-go-home game awaits, and until it comes, fans' assignment is to get a bit more familiar with this feeling. If the Cubs can (at long last) shake off their century-old identity as irrelevant losers and become the perennial contender they ought to be, it's a feeling their fans will need to understand and manage better over time.

The festive atmosphere of Wrigley Field when the team is good is a delightful old friend—a warm hug of a thing, even with the threat of a crushing loss looming in the background. It's fun to live through days like these. It's fun to immerse oneself and open the pores to the full vibrancy of it. It's also a tingly feeling, and that tingle is the danger—the threat of real pain, if things go wrong. No matter. It's worth the risk. Not all old friends are euphemisms.

Of course, there will be two especially important old friends Thursday, in ways far more tangible and immediate than anything I've invited you to consider so far. One is Yu Darvish, the player who (perhaps) best emblemizes the collapse of the last great Cubs core. That's not an indictment of Darvish, of course, but of the Cubs—and, perhaps, a bit of an admission that the team got unlucky along the way. They signed Darvish prior to 2018, on a six-year deal meant to help them sustain the high-energy greatness that they'd begun to establish over the previous three seasons.

Instead, he got hurt and pitched miserably in 2018. In 2019, he was healthy, but inconsistent. He pitched very well down the stretch and helped the Cubs hang around in a weak NL Central race, but ultimately, he was on the Wrigley mound when the dream of a true Cubs dynasty finally died, in a late-September start against the Cardinals. He took a 2-1 lead all the way to the ninth inning, but Joe Maddon's mistrust of his bullpen had grown so deep that he tried to get a complete game out of a tiring Darvish, who let in two Cardinals runs and lost the game. That was the last gasp. The Cubs tumbled out of the playoff picture; Maddon was fired; COVID hit. Darvish could have won the Cy Young Award in the meaningless 2020 season, but he didn't, and the Cubs lost his meaningless start in the meaningless Wild Card Series they played that fall against the Marlins. Then, the Cubs traded him to the Padres, for what has turned out to be Owen Caissie and nothing else of use.

That was five full years ago, now. Darvish is only still in San Diego because he signed a massive extension prior to 2023. He turned 39 in August, and he's nowhere near the pitcher he was at his very best. He doesn't miss as many bats, and he gives up lots of homers lately. He's been hurt (neck, groin, elbow) and missed half of each of the last two campaigns. Yet, he still has six different pitches he throws at least 10% of the time for each handedness of batter, and he still throws strikes. In that way, he's still more like a video game character than a real pitcher, and he's still not the guy you want to face with your season on the line, exactly.

He had a 5.38 ERA this year, but after a nightmarish first four starts in July, that number was just 4.23 over his final 11 starts. In those appearances, the Padres went 8-3, and Darvish had a 26.4% strikeout rate against a 4.6% walk rate. He averaged five innings and 19.6 batters faced per game in those starts. The Padres would take that Thursday, though it's a high-variance way to live. That could be one run in five frames; it could be four. It does feel like Matt Shaw could hook a Darvish sweeper into the basket in left field Thursday, and if he does, it will matter a great deal whether there's a runner on base or not. If so, the Cubs will be well on their way to knocking off that old friend.

Before the thing is over, though, they'll need to contend with another old friend: Jeremiah Estrada. The jettisoned ex-Cubs reliever became such a story last year for his extraordinary strikeout stuff that it's easy to be let down by his performance this season; he ran into homer trouble of his own and posted a pedestrian relief ERA. He'll have to bear a significant load, with Mason Miller and Adrián Morejón unlikely to be available and Robert Suarez likely limited to one inning. Estrada, too, could give up a big hit to a Cubs slugger, but if he comes in and blows them away instead, it'll deepen the pain of the gut punch that would be losing the game and series.

All that familiarity, all that atmosphere, and all that intensity will swirl into a perfect storm for some high drama Thursday. There's a great deal on the line, for both sides. The Padres are stretched thinner and have a dimmer medium-term future than the Cubs, even at a moment when the Cubs' medium-term future is somewhat murky. The emotions will be high. The air will feel electrified, and that electricity will spread and shift faster than usual because of the heat. This is what baseball fans spend April through September craving. Not having won the division, the Cubs need this win to prove their season a legitimate success.

Even if they don't come away with it, this series has given us moments. There's no catchy banner to fly for getting the first Wild Card berth in a six-team playoff format, but these games themselves become flags that fly forever in the breezes of memory. Seiya Suzuki's home run and Carson Kelly's follow-up shot. Dansby Swanson's relentlessly smart, nimble defense. Nico Hoerner finding hits everywhere. These things don't fit into a sentence on a t-shirt, but they're the real reward for having won the Wild Card this year. Now, the Cubs need one more good day full of those warm and vivid moments—the kind that live on in your mind long after they happen.

Another old friend—the Brewers—awaits after this, and they offer plenty of trouble to worry about. For today, though, the only thing that matters is today. Not long after sunset, tomorrow will take its weight, but for the long hours before first pitch, Cubs fans have to get comfortable with their prickly set of old friends and get ready to revel with a huge collection of them if the home team delivers.

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[Bertz]

Darvish is more or less unplayable against LHP this year, and that's not something that's gotten better as the year has gone along.  The Cubs are a very bad matchup for him (I'm definitely going to eat these words).

I suspect the Padres' plan is Darvish once through the order, turn it over to Kyle Hart to get through the run of lefties in the front half of the lineup, then Michael King, then the short relievers.  I also wouldn't be surprised if Shildt is just going to say horsefeathers it and run Miller/Morejon out there again.  Something like this?

Darvish (2)

Hart (1)

King (2)

Morejon (1)

Miller (1)

Estrada (2)

Suarez (1)

Feels like you've gotta get to Darvish and you've probably got to get to him fast.  I wonder if Craig loads the lineup up with all the lefties, or if he holds a bit back for later in the game.