Jake Arrieta made it clear he didn’t care who the Cubs play in the NLDS, but that was before the Giants went on a four-game winning streak to close the season and before Madison Bumgarner’s shutout of the Mets in the NL Wild Card game.
It’s unclear how he feels now, but he can’t be ecstatic based on the way the Giants are playing lately.
Once again, the Giants are rolling at the right time, and seem to be picking up right where they left off in 2014. We’ve all seen this movie before, and with the pressure of a century’s worth of playoff failure already on their shoulders, the last thing the Cubs want is the Giants and their even-year magic coming to town.
The Giants’ rotation has been dominant of late, with San Francisco starters going at least seven innings and allowing less than three runs in the last five games. Cubs manager Joe Maddon knows first hand the effect that supreme starting pitching can have in a playoff series, regardless of overall pedigree. The Cubs were swept by an inferior Mets team in the 2015 NLCS, with New York holding Chicago to eight total runs in four games. Maddon mentioned that if the Giants’ starters perform like that, there’s not much you can do.
“Their pitching was unbelievably good,” manager Joe Maddon said of the Giants on Thursday. “That’s it. I’m not trying to be smart in any way. They were just good. They just pitched that well. You would hope to not run into that same method of pitching among the entire group. I was part of that also with the Angels against the White Sox in 2005 – their pitching was absolutely phenomenal.”
“When you run into hot pitching like that, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. There’s no lesson to be learned, I don’t think. You just hope that the team you run into is not that hot with their pitching.”
The lesson to be learned over the last six years is that you don’t want to face the San Francisco Giants in the playoffs, regardless of any mitigating factors. We also have to acknowledge that the Giants were the only team in the league better than the Cubs during the season’s first half, and played them extremely close in three one-run games at Wrigley in September. Unfortunately for Chicago, that’s the team the Giants have resembled over the last week, which means they’re heading into the NLDS with confidence.
On paper it would appear that the Cubs would be the ones embracing a matchup with the Giants. Chicago coasted through 162 games, finishing with the league’s best run differential, while the Giants ended the season on a 30-42 tumble, clinching a playoff berth on the final day of the season.
As Maddon knows, none of that matters now. The 2010 Giants also clinched a playoff berth on the final day and ended up winning the World Series. What’s more, the Giants have gone head-to-head in the postseason with a team that had the better regular season record and won six times in the last six seasons .
“You’ve got an experienced, mature bunch that will figure out a way to beat you,” an NL East scout told CSN Chicago, “It’s an even-number year. That’s what (would scare) me. Look at what they did two years ago. They were in the cellar then and look at what they did.”
Whether or not the Giants can continue to ride the magical wave remains to be seen, but there is little doubt the where the pressure resides heading into Game 1 on Friday.
“We were that team last year.” Cubs general manager Jed Hoyer said. “You get on that plane, you feel like world-beaters after winning that (wild-card) game on the road. We’re going to play a good team that feels good about themselves. That’s why I think the focus has to be on us and why we need to play good baseball.”
