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The Forest Scout

The Student News Site of Lake Forest High School

The Forest Scout

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Even the Pitchers Can Hit: Cubs Advance Series Lead in Saturday Night’s Win

After Friday night’s heartbreaking loss for the San Francisco Giants the one thing that they had in mind was rebounding Tuesday night and then later flying back home satisfyingly with the series split at one game apiece. But, when you are facing the best team in baseball that is easier said than done. Game 2 had a different pace in opposition to Friday night, but the outcome was the same.

Jeff Samardzija made his return to Wrigley last night and as he presumably expected, some boos were heard from the Wrigley faithful. Pitching for the Cubs was Kyle Hendricks, who held the lowest ERA in baseball at the end of the season. 

Unlike Friday night, the scoring began immediately.  The Cubs leadoff man in the first, Dexter Fowler,opened things up for the Cubs with a double. Two batters later, Ben Zobrist got in on the action with a single to right field that easily scored Fowler from second.

In the second inning the Cubs tacked on two more runs. With the bases loaded at the end of the order the Cubs pitcher at the time, Kyle Hendricks stepped into the batter’s box only later to deliver a bloop single into center, scoring Javier Baez and Jason Heyward. The Cubs still weren’t done messing with their ex-pitcher  in the second. MVP candidate Kris Bryant singled to score Wilson Contreras. By the end of the second, the Cubs already had a 4-0 advantage and Bruce Bochy, manager of the Giants, called it a day for Samardzija.

In the third the Giants tried to spark some life with a Joe Panik double followed by pinch hitter Gregor Blanco supplying a double that put the Giants’ first run of the series on the board. Later on in the third,  Blanco advanced to 3rd base and the Giants scored one more run on a sacrifice fly.

A scary moment occurred for the Cubs and their fans in the top of the 4th when Angel Pagan hit a sharp comebacker right to Kyle Hendricks who wasn’t prepared to stick his glove out and catch the ball due to its exit velocity at 94 mph. The ball hit Hendricks right in his pitching forearm. After the injury, he threw a few practice pitches which convinced Joe Maddon the safest thing to do was to take him out of the game and get a diagnosis on what happened to his forearm. At that point, Cubs fan were praying that their best pitcher wouldn’t be out for the rest of the playoffs. Later on, the Cubs announced that the X-Rays had come back negative. Hendricks injury was a forearm contusion, which is fancy for saying a bruised forearm. 

The relief pitcher for the Cubs that came in after Hendricks was Travis Wood, whose pitching performance was overshadowed by what he did when he stepped into the batter’s box in the 4th. With one out and a 4-2 Cubs lead, Wood jacked a pitch right down the middle into the Wrigley Fied bleachers. The ball went a projected 393 feet with the exit velocity of 101.5 mph, which was well farther than Javier Baez’s home run from Friday night.  Wood’s historic home run was his tenth of his career and boosted the Cubs lead to 3 runs.

As the game strided along, it seemed like almost every inning each team would throw in a different pitcher. At the end of the game the combined number of pitchers used was 13, ten more pitchers than game one.

In the 9th, Cubs’ closer Aroldis Chapman came in to close out the game. Chapman got his pitch speed up to 103 MPH and had no trouble closing out the Cubs 5-2 victory over the Giants.

A Cubs fan could not have asked for anything more in these first two games at Wrigley Field. Since this is the NLDS, the maximum amount of games that can be played are five opposed to what the NLCS/ALCS and World Series which you can go the maximum of seven games. This means that since the Cubs have won two games already they can clinch in the Bay Area Monday night. The last thing the Cubs and their fans want to do though is act like they have this series won. Yogi Berra once said “it ain’t over until it’s over”, which many teams over the course of baseball history have demonstrated, like in 2004 when the Boston Red Sox quickly went down 3-0 to the Yankees in the ALCS, but still ended up coming back and winning the pennant; or, in 2012 when the Giants fell behind the Reds 2-0 in the NDLS, but still found a way to win the next three games and move onto the NLCS. It’s a good thing to be excited, but the Cubs know that they will not have completely succeeded until the beat the Giants three times.

Today is a traveling day for the Cubs and the Giants as they move the series to AT&T Park. Monday’s game three will be a late one for us in the midwest with the first pitch being scheduled at 8:30PM. The pitching matchup will be one of the best of the series. It will be last year’s Cy Young winner, Jake Arrieta, against what is beginning to seem like one of the best postseason pitchers to take the mound in Madison Bumgardner. Game three should be fun to watch. Monday will be the day that the Cubs clinch a spot in the NLCS, or the day that the Giants get their revenge. After game three be sure to check in with The Forest Scout the following morning for a complete wrap-up of the game out in San Francisco.

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About the Contributor
Joe Thomas, Author
Joe Thomas is a staff writer for The Forest Scout who has a burning passion for sports. He covers high school football, hockey and baseball along with the MLB and college basketball. He constantly dreams of being a writer for a professional sports organization when he is older. You can find the majority of his work in the In Between The Lines section.
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