The Cubs played another lousy game Saturday night. There is no other way to describe their performance. Again the hitting or lack thereof and the lack of plate discipline proved their undoing. Whether they are pressing or whether the Indians pitching is that good is probably a moot point now. The only players who seemed to have a solid approach were Fowler and Rizzo. Bryant was hopeless and made two errors in the second inning, one physical on the bad throw and the other mental on a throw that should not have been made that cost a run.
The team played with a sense of desperation. Whether they can recover to at least take the series back to Cleveland is another big question mark. You want to think so. With Lester pitching against the weakest of the Indians starters Sunday night, the Cubs are still favored. Also, they would send Arrieta and Hendricks on full rest against Tomlin and Kluber on short rest were the series to return to Cleveland. They have to get over the hump, however. They have done so before, notably in the LA series where they looked pretty bad in Games 2 and 3 as well.
One observation on Lackey. This guy has serious anger management issues and they really do affect the outcome of closely contested games. He was fuming all through the second and third innings about bad calls. I could see only one egregious bad call, the rest were borderline or correct. The thing is he loses concentration after one of these slights and he invariably makes a bad pitch on the next offering.
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