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No matter who wins the 2016 World Series, history will be made. The Cleveland Indians’ last championship came in 1948. The Chicago Cubs’ last World Series appearance was three years earlier.

Facebook wasn’t even invented yet! Everyone’s internet was dial-up! There was only a Starbucks every two blocks instead of every block!

It’s amazing that people existed back in those times. But here we are, all this time later, with a pair of teams that took their own unique route to the Fall Classic.

The Indians are, by far, the bigger surprise. Experts who chose them to win the AL Central were in the minority—let alone those who picked them to win the American League. Their rotation behind Corey Kluber was seen as shaky, and their bullpen needed some work behind Cody Allen. No one questioned their offensive firepower, but games in October are time and again won with elite arms.

Cleveland has gone ahead and proved everyone wrong over the last few weeks, posting a 7-1 postseason record behind elite pitching. The Indians have given up more than five runs just once so far and have gotten by despite fielding a makeshift rotation at times.

Their Game 5 American League Championship Series starter, Ryan Merritt, had one career start and 11 innings on his MLB resume before contributing to a six-hit shutout of the Toronto Blue Jays. Merritt was only placed in that position after Trevor Bauer injured his hand while fixing a drone in the middle of a postseason run.

Had the Indians gone on to blow the ALCS, that drone incident would have been enough to push a “curse” conspiracy theory.

Cleveland can attribute a lot of its success to manager Terry Francona, who has pushed all the right buttons in this postseason run. He’s trusted reliever Andrew Miller to go multiple innings in each of his appearances, has known just when to pull a tiring starter and has kept his team loose amid the postseason pressure.

Second baseman Jason Kipnis told Kevin Kernan of the New York Post:

Tito is the forefront of us, in all we do. You are not going to find one guy in here who does not enjoy playing for him and doesn’t wish he would be their manager the rest of their careers.

Once you have a guy like Tito, you really don’t want anybody else to manage you. You are like, ‘This is the way it should be, this is the way I want it to be, this is the way I enjoy it.’ He’s so much fun and he lets you be who you are.

Joe Maddon can take just as much credit in the triumph of these Cubs. Brought over as part of Theo Epstein’s master rebuilding plan before last season, Maddon has won 200 regular-season games in two years. If Chicago wins more than two games in this series, he will have surpassed his postseason win total with the Tampa Bay Rays.

Epstein has been at the forefront of the headlines over the last few days for good reason. Brought over after an unfortunately tense exit from Boston, the Cubs president enacted one of the best slow rebuilds in recent history. He stocked the prospect cupboards with elite bats, bided his time in free agency and then pounced when everything was ready to culminate.

The Cubs posted a ridiculous plus-252 run differential during the regular season. While they didn’t wind up blasting records as projected, it’s hard to do much better than rank third in runs scored and first in runs against.

“I think sometimes in the game today, it gets to the point where it’s just about acquiring a number,” Maddon said, per Tyler Kepner of the New York Times. “I’m a big believer in that, but I also like the balance between the person and what the back of his baseball card says. Our guys do a wonderful job of balancing the math with the actual person.”

Chicago enters this series as a heavy favorite, listed at minus-185 at Odds Shark. The depth of its roster is hard to contend with. If you get past Jon Lester, here comes Jake Arrieta. If you get past Arrieta, Kyle Kendricks and John Lackey are right behind him. It’s hard to imagine a lineup starting better than Dexter Fowler, Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Ben Zobrist.

Oh yeah, sure you can. You can add Kyle Schwarber to the end of that. He has made progress in his rehab and may wind up being available for designated hitter duties in the Fall Classic.

“He asked for a chance to do this,” Epstein said, per Jesse Rogers of ESPN.com. “With as hard as Kyle has worked and as much as this means to him—and potentially us—we wanted to give him that opportunity.”

Even if Schwarber winds up being available for only pinch-hitting duty, he would give the Cubs another weapon in their seemingly endless arsenal. It’s hard to look at the talent on the two sides of the diamond and come up with any other outcome than a Cubs win.

The Indians have an almost-unhittable back end of their bullpen, but getting to Miller and Allen will be hard against this lineup. After more than a century, the Cubs are primed for another World Series championship.

Prediction: Cubs in six.

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A long drought is going to come to an end at the conclusion of the 2016 World Series between the National League champion Chicago Cubs and the American League champion Cleveland Indians.

The Cubs have not been to the World Series since 1945, when they lost in seven games to the Detroit Tigers. Chicago’s last World Series title came in 1908, and that was before the team called Wrigley Field home.

The Indians are baseball royalty in comparison. The Tribe last made it to the World Series in 1997, when they lost in seven heartbreaking games to the Florida Marlins (not yet rebranded as the Miami Marlins). Cleveland had the lead in the ninth inning of the seventh game but could not hold onto that advantage.

The Indians last won the World Series in 1948, surviving a one-game playoff with the Boston Red Sox to win the American League pennant and defeating the Boston Braves in six games to win the championship.

One of those droughts is about to go by the wayside, as one of these excellent teams will soon triumph in the World Series.

The city of Chicago went through a catharsis Saturday night when the Cubs defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-0 in the sixth game of the National League Championship Series to clinch a long-awaited pennant.

The celebration outside Wrigley Field lasted until morning as Cubs fans laughed, cried, partied and broke out in song.

The World Series will start in Cleveland Tuesday night, and the Cubs will bring a dominant team to Progressive Field. The starting rotation includes Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks, Jake Arrieta and John Lackey, and it appears likely that Arrieta or Lester will get the start in Game 1.

Arrieta was scheduled to start Game 7 versus the Dodgers if that had been necessary, but Chicago manager Joe Maddon did not make pronouncements on his Game 1 starting pitcher during the middle of the pennant celebration.

The Indians don’t appear to have the depth among their starters to compare to the Cubs. Corey Kluber is the ace and has been effective throughout the postseason. However, Josh Tomlin is the only other regular starter who is not battling an injury, and he appears to be hittable. He had a 13-9 record with a 4.40 ERA and a 1.19 WHIP in the regular season.

Starters Danny Salazar, Carlos Carrasco and Trevor Bauer (cut pinkie) are all hurt, and that means Cleveland manager Terry Francona will have to rely on a sensational bullpen led by Andrew Miller.

The Cubs have a powerful lineup, which is led by Kris Bryant (39 HR, .554 slugging percentage) and Anthony Rizzo (32 HR, 109 RBI) and has outstanding supporting players, including Dexter Fowler (.393 on-base percentage), Javier Baez (14 HR, 59 RBI), Addison Russell (21 HR and 95 RBI) and Ben Zobrist (18 HR, 76 RBI).

The Indians have a couple of power hitters in Mike Napoli (34 HR) and Carlos Santana (34 HR), and they also have a fine supporting cast in Francisco Lindor (.301 average, 78 RBI), Jason Kipnis (23 HR, .469 slugging percentage) and Lonnie Chisenhall (.286 average).

The Cubs, who won 103 games to lead Major League Baseball, are strong favorites to come away with the World Series title. They are minus-185 favorites (bet $185 to win $100) to win the title, according to Odds Shark.

The Indians are plus-160 underdogs (bet $100 to win $160).

A dramatic World Series is about to unfold, and each voracious fanbase is hopeful that its long World Series dry spell will come to an end.

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A drought is going to end in the 2016 World Series. The question is if it will be the Cleveland Indians winning their first title since 1948 or the Chicago Cubs winning their first title since 1908.

Starting on Tuesday, we’ll find out. Before we preview the matchup, here’s a look at the schedule and television information for the series: 

No team was better during the regular season than the Cubs. No team has been better in the postseason than Cleveland.

The Cubs finished an MLB-best 103-58 this season, led by manager Joe Maddon and the most balanced team in baseball. Offensively, the Cubs are paced by a cadre of superstars, including Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo and Addison Russell, and few teams are deeper on the bench. That offense has survived arguably the two best pitchers in baseball, Madison Bumgarner and Clayton Kershaw, this postseason.

The pitching staff, meanwhile, has a fantastic one-two punch in Jon Lester and Jake Arrieta and Aroldis Chapman closing down games with his heat-seeking fastballs. 

While the Cubs have gone 7-3 this postseason, Cleveland has gone an impressive—and surprising—7-1.

First, the team dispatched of the American League’s best offense, the Boston Red Sox, sweeping the series and holding Boston to seven runs in three games. Then the Toronto Blue Jays’ big boppers came to town and were promptly handled in five games, with Cleveland’s pitchers shutting out the Jays twice.

Cleveland’s pitching has been superb, led by Corey Kluber (2-1 with a 0.98 ERA, 1.09 WHIP and 20 strikeouts in 18.1 innings pitched), Josh Tomlin (2-0, 2.53 ERA, 0.94 WHIP), Andrew Miller (1-0, 0.00 ERA, 0.60 WHIP, four holds, one save, 11.2 innings pitched) and Cody Allen (0.00 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, five saves).

In many ways, these teams are similar. The Cubs were third in baseball during the regular season in runs scored (808); Cleveland was fifth (777). The Cubs led baseball in ERA (3.15) and batting average allowed (.212) during the regular season; Cleveland was seventh (3.84) and fifth (.243), respectively. 

Neither team has hit particularly well in the postseason (.222 batting average for the Cubs, .208 for Cleveland), though that is to be somewhat expected against baseball’s top pitchers in October. And the Cubs offense has recently awoken, scoring 23 runs in the last three games, while Cleveland has relied on timely hitting and the ability to win close games—five of its seven postseason triumphs have come by two or fewer runs—to reach the World Series. 

Of course, the storylines surrounding these teams are different. The Cubs are laden with talent, led by the curse-breaking Theo Epstein, the quirky but prescient Maddon and a giant payroll supplementing an impressive collection of young talent that has come through the team’s system.

Cleveland, meanwhile, is the scrappy, never-say-die bunch that has overcome injuries and was overshadowed by sexier organizations in the American League but has quietly been excellent all season long.

Of course, all the storylines are coated in drought. Neither one of these franchises has won a title in a long time. While Chicago has at least had the Bulls, Blackhawks and even the Bears in 1985 to help scratch that championship itch, Cleveland has had to suffer through the Browns and wait for the return of LeBron James to bring the Cavaliers a title this past season.

Ultimately, how each team handles the pressure will be a huge factor. So, too, will be each team maximizing its strengths and minimizing its weaknesses. The Cubs, on paper, have the better offense and starting rotation. Cleveland has home-field advantage and a lights-out bullpen. Maddon and Terry Francona are both excellent managers. 

Any way you slice it, this year’s World Series shapes up to be one of the most memorable in quite some time. One fanbase that hasn’t had a reason to celebrate a baseball team’s ultimate achievement will get that opportunity this season. The other will have the most familiar of heartbreaks to endure once again.

Watching it all unfold will be fantastic theater. And hopefully fantastic baseball, too.

You can follow Timothy Rapp on Twitter.

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Fact: The Chicago Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-0 on Saturday night, advancing to the World Series for the first time since 1945.

Bleacher Report will be bringing sports fans the most interesting and engaging Cold Hard Fact of the day, presented by Coors Light.

Source: B/R Insights

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At long last, the 2016 World Series is set. 

While the Cleveland Indians punched their ticket on Wednesday—which feels like an eternity ago—the Chicago Cubs broke through and captured their first National League pennant since 1945 on Saturday with a 5-0 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers at Wrigley Field. 

And now that the matchup is official, we can start to pore over the initial odds for this year’s Fall Classic, which have been provided by OddsShark.com: 

Although the Cubs needed six games to put away the Dodgers, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’re solid favorites to take home their first World Series title in 108 years.

Chicago was a -130 (bet $130 to win $100) favorite to win the World Series following its Game 5 win in Los Angeles, with the Indians holding firm at +160 (bet $100 to win $160).

But now that it’s a sure thing that the Cubs will be representing the NL in the Fall Classic, it makes sense that their odds would increase in a way that reflects their recent play and season-long trends. 

Chicago was the class of MLB all season long and won a league-best 103 games, and the postseason has offered the Cubs a chance to sustain their success despite a few brief hiccups. 

While they once trailed L.A. 2-1, the Cubs mounted a fierce charge and rattled off three straight wins that saw them outscore the Dodgers 23-6 with a couple of strong pitching performances from some of their most dynamic arms. 

Jon Lester was sensational in Game 5, scattering five hits, striking out six and allowing one earned run in seven innings. Then, Kyle Hendricks pitched the game of his life on Saturday, with 7.1 scoreless innings of two-hit ball. 

So while the Indians have wielded the postseason’s most dangerous pitching staff (1.77 ERA, .206 opponent average), the Cubs’ stable of aces can’t be overlooked. 

And if Chicago’s bats get hot, Cleveland could be in real trouble. 

Through nine postseason games, the Cubs have scored a playoff-best 43 runs. Comparatively, the Indians have scored 27 runs in eight games. 

With Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, Anthony Rizzo and Dexter Fowler all ready to strike at a moment’s notice, the Cubs have the firepower to supplement one of MLB’s strongest starting staffs and take home a title. 

Based on the way things have played out over the past week, the smart money should be on Chicago to snap the most famous drought in sports. 

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For the baseball fan who appreciates the historical aspect of the game, the Chicago Cubs clinching the National League Championship Series on Saturday night with a 5-0 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers set up a dream World Series against the Cleveland Indians.

Before we get into the final teams remaining, here’s a look at the postseason bracket:

Odds To Win World Series

Odds relayed by Odds Shark

Cleveland Indians: 163-100

Chicago Cubs: 50-59

Predictions

Cubs defeat Indians in seven games for World Series title

These will be two teams with conflicting amounts of rest heading into the World Series. Come Tuesday, the Indians will have had over five days of rest while the Cubs will have had two. 

There are opposite views that come up about rest. Some believe a break is good for a weary team that has played over 170 games in a season. Others will say it quells the momentum gained through a busy October schedule. 

One thing that is certain is the dominant Indians pitching is coming into the Fall Classic fresh off resounding performances in the American League Division Series and American League Championship Series. 

In eight games, they went 7-1 with with a 1.77 ERA while allowing just 15 runs. Though it’s been a makeshift rotation of sorts behind Corey Kluber, Cleveland’s bullpen has been stellar behind Andrew Miller, who struck out 14 batters in 7.2 innings in the ALCS:

However, Cleveland’s offense has struggled in the postseason, batting just .208. They’ve relied on the long ball during October, launching 11 home runs compared to their 26 RBI. 

They’re going to be meeting a Cubs team that has allowed just four home runs in 10 postseason games, so that option could be in jeopardy in the World Series. 

On top of that, the Chicago offense has ignited to look like the one that led the majors with 4.99 runs per game during the regular season.

After being shut out twice in a row by the Dodgers in Games 2 and 3 of the NLCS, the Cubs scored 23 runs on 33 hits over their last three games. 

They’ve also scored 21 more runs than the Indians have this postseason, although the Cubs have played three more games.

But with their ability to get after Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw on Saturday, Cubs bats look unstoppable:

Heading into the Fall Classic, the Chicago Cubs are playing a more well-rounded brand of baseball, which is why they’ll squeak out their first World Series title in 108 years in seven games. 

Stats courtesy of MLB.com.

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I went looking to see how Bleacher Report covered things the last time the Chicago Cubs went to the World Series. No luck.

I couldn’t find any of our stories about the last Cleveland Indians‘ World Series title, either.

We weren’t around in 1945 (the last time the Cubs made it) or in 1948 (the last time the Indians won it) or even in 1997 (the last time the Indians played in it).

So yeah, you’re going to be watching history when the 2016 World Series opens Tuesday night at Progressive Field. Cubs vs. Indians: Two teams that have been around forever; two teams that haven’t won in forever; two teams that won something pretty important this week.

Tuesday night will get here soon enough. First, let’s take a quick look back on how all of this happened, how and why the Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS and the Indians beat the Toronto Blue Jays in the ALCS.

Catch your breath and enjoy the first Bleacher Report League Championship Series Awards to feature the Cubs and Indians.

Begin Slideshow

The 2016 baseball season is down to two organizations, and it just so happens they’re the sport’s most tortured.

The Cleveland Indians and Chicago Cubs will take baseball’s two longest championship droughts into Game 1 of the World Series on Tuesday.

But after winning the American League Championship Series and National League Championship Series respectively, each seemed to craft a blueprint for how to get to October’s Fall Classic.

Begin Slideshow

CHICAGO — So, 71 years later, this is what it looks like when the Chicago Cubs storm into the World Series…

Anthony Rizzo hitting everything Clayton Kershaw threw him on the screws: a double, a long ball, a fly ball in the first inning that Los Angeles Dodgers left fielder Andrew Toles plumb dropped. Was that a goat impeding his vision?

Kris Bryant hungrily taking a seven-decades-sized bite into Kershaw’s 95 mph cheese and looping an RBI single to right field just two batters into the bottom of the first, immediately flipping the switch from anxiety to anticipation.

Javier Baez alertly doing it again, letting a line drive skip in order to short-hop it, starting another double play and stamping another exclamation mark onto his postseason wizardry.

Kyle Hendricks, a 26-year-old right-hander acquired from Texas for Ryan Dempster four years ago, handling the Dodgers with the touch of a jeweler and the heart of a lion, mowing through 17 in a row after a rare error on Baez in the second.

Wrigley Field, stuffed with 42,386 for the game of their lives, those fans leaning into this 5-0 World Series-punching ticket like few other games in the park’s 102-year history, inhaling nervously, exhaling in relief, screaming, singing, dancing, pleading and, in many cases, shedding tears of joy.

No fear. No goats. No errors.

The Chicago Cubs, lovable winners.

“Perception,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said when this historical event was finished, standing near the pitcher’s mound, thousands of fans still in their seats, hundreds of people on the field, addressing how life had permanently changed by evening’s end. “That’s the big part of it.

“The thing I was always hearing was that the Cubs are lovable losers. I never quite understood that. That’s not the way I was raised.”

It’s not the way he’s raising these young Cubbies, clearly.

“Listening to talk about superstition and all that nonsense, that dragged a lot of people down,” Maddon continued. “I think the perception changes.”

These Cubs are so cool, display so much grace under pressure, that Steve Bartman could have tossed out the ceremonial first pitch before Game 6 and it wouldn’t have fazed them one iota.

So this, too, is what it looks like when the Cubs charge into the World Series: Hall of Famer Billy Williams standing on the field amid the celebration, nearly swallowed by the roaring wall of sound in the minutes after the final out and practically being overcome with emotion.

“I think of all the fellas I played with like Ernie [Banks] and Ron Santo,” Williams said of his two departed teammates. “They’re not here to see it, but I’m thinking about them. Like Jackie Gleason said, ‘How sweet it is!’”

Williams continued: “They’re up there celebrating, too. This is similar to what I thought it would be. I look out at the fans, the full house, the people on the street. You might have 100,000 or 200,000 people out there.

“Everywhere I go in Chicago, people come up to me and say, ‘This is the year! This is the year!’…

“This is really, really great. I can’t hardly explain the feeling I have.”

On Tuesday in Cleveland, the Cubs will play in their first World Series game since Oct. 10, 1945. A Cubs lineup featuring Stan Hack and Peanuts Lowrey was beaten by Hal Newhouser and the Detroit Tigers in Game 7 that day. Two weeks later, the United Nations was founded. Shortly after that, the first ballpoint pens went on sale in New York.

Ballpoint pens?

“This is only the beginning, you know, for myself and for this squad,” shortstop Addison Russell promised. “I’m excited. I’m excited to see what more we can do and what limits we can push. If we can do this in two seasons…”

After winning 97 games last year before running into the wood chipper that was the New York Mets’ pitching staff in the NLCS, they blasted back this year with 103 more wins and raced to baseball’s best overall record.

They took to heart Maddon’s message from day one of spring training: Embrace the target, win every pitch, win every inning, buy into the team.

So this, too, is what it looks like when the Cubs crash the World Series after 71 years: Jason Heyward, who signed an eight-year, $184 million deal last winter, taking his place on the bench for Game 6 Saturday night as Maddon inserted into right field Albert Almora Jr., the first first-round draft pick (sixth overall) of president of baseball operations Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer after they took over in late 2011.

Heyward’s reaction?

“It’s about the team all season, but even more so in the postseason,” the outfielder said after what seemed like thousands of bottles of Blanc de Blancs champagne had been sprayed, poured, drank and saved. “It’s been that way all year, so many different players helping.

“Joe told us in spring training, if everyone on the roster does one thing positive every night, that’s 25 positive things every night. That’s a lot of positives.”

All of those positives over six weeks of spring training plus 162 regular-season games, then another four more against the San Francisco Giants in the Division Series and, well, six more against the Dodgers in this NLCS…hey, that’s a ton of positives. And at every turn when the Cubs had the chance to hit the skids, they turned it around.

There was the two-week slump just before the All-Star break. The nerves of Game 4 in San Francisco. Maddon reiterated late Saturday night how much he really, really wanted to avoid a Game 5 with the Giants because, even though it would have been in Wrigley Field, he was extremely angst-ridden about the prospect of what Johnny Cueto could do to them.

Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson always said that 1984 was his toughest season because of the way the Detroit Tigers raced out to the record-setting 35-5 start. By June, expectations were so high that all that was left for the Tigers to accomplish was to win the World Series. Sparky always said after that, the rest of that summer he feared being the manager to screw it all up.

If Maddon or the Cubs ever had any of that trepidation, they never let on. But when Dodgers pinch hitter Yasiel Puig bounced to into a 6-4-3 double play, Russell to Baez to Rizzo, with closer Aroldis Chapman on the mound, it was as if the lid popped straight off a pressure cooker.

Unleashed, Wrigley Field sent an emotional howl up to the heavens. Couples took selfies in the stands with the mob of celebrating Cubs on the field behind them. Sons high-fived fathers.

Catcher Willson Contreras hurled his glove up toward the stars, then raced to embrace Chapman.

“One more time!” Contreras shrieked to Chapman, referring to Cleveland and the World Series. “One more time! We’ve got to do this one more time!”

Thirty minutes after the game, Contreras, 24, and his glove had yet to be reunited.

“I don’t know where it’s at,” he said. “That was my first reaction when I saw the double play. It’s amazing.”

Everything about this night, this day, this summer in Wrigley Field was and is amazing.

So this, too, is what it looks like when the Chicago Cubs and the World Series meet again, 71 years later: Epstein walking his dog, a mutt named Winston, earlier in the day, through his Wrigleyville neighborhood, encountering all sorts of well-wishers.

“Yeah, walking the dog, people are very into it, as they should be,” said Epstein, who lives seven blocks from Wrigley Field, in those final, jittery hours before the night that will be remembered forever.

“I love being in a city that’s playing October baseball where you can just feel everyone captivated by the ballclub, everyone walking around tired from staying up late, prioritizing baseball above all else. It’s a great phenomenon.”

So, too, is Baez, and Rizzo, and Bryant. And Hendricks, and Russell, and Maddon.

“A lot of them are in their early 20s, and they’re not burdened by that stuff,” Epstein said of the curse.

Nor will they be, ever again.

No fear. No goats. No errors.

The Chicago Cubs, lovable winners.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball. 

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Clayton Kershaw‘s worst postseason misadventures have mostly been tales of his having it and then losing it.

In Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, he never had it.

The Los Angeles Dodgers‘ ace left-hander was long gone by the time Yasiel Puig grounded into a double play to close a 5-0 win for the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field on Saturday night—sending them to their first World Series since 1945 and that much closer to their first championship since 1908. After setting out in his latest attempt to save the Dodgers from elimination, Kershaw lasted only five innings and allowed all five of Chicago’s runs.

That only four of those runs were earned is a small consolation prize. Kershaw’s career postseason ERA is up to 4.55 anyway. That’s the highest of any pitcher with at least 85 postseason innings.

And as noted by Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register, Kershaw’s Game 6 performance was just the latest case of his being at his worst when the Dodgers need him most:

This isn’t the only reason L.A. has yet to turn any of its four straight NL West titles into a pennant or a World Series. But it is a reason. And a big one, at that.

Of course, the Dodgers may not have staved off elimination Saturday even if Kershaw had pitched like the three-time Cy Young winner they know him to be. Chicago pitchers Kyle Hendricks and Aroldis Chapman combined to allow only four baserunners, and all four were erased on three double plays and a pickoff. It was 27 up, and 27 down. In circumstances like those, there’s only so much a starting pitcher can do.

It is the primary function of the starting pitcher, however, to at least give his team a chance to win. Kershaw couldn’t even do that.

The vibrations were bad from the beginning. After allowing only two hits and no runs in seven innings in a 1-0 win in Game 2, Kershaw served up a pair of hits and a run to the first two batters he faced Saturday when Dexter Fowler doubled and Kris Bryant singled him home. Then there was an error by Andrew Toles in left field that set up Ben Zobrist for a sacrifice fly.

At the time, Toles’ error sounded like the opening notes of a familiar tune.

Kershaw’s postseason failures are a compelling narrative, but within it is contained a subplot of his teammates letting him down. As August Fagerstrom covered at FanGraphs, it’s typically been the guys in the Dodgers bullpen who have left him unsupported. The L.A. defense’s failure to help him seemed like the next logical step.

But it was also hard to ignore just how un-Kershaw he looked in the first inning. After needing only 84 pitches to get through seven innings in Game 2, he needed 30 to get through one in Game 6. His velocity was there, but he couldn’t get his fastball to go where he wanted it to.

Kershaw couldn’t fix that as the evening wore on, and it became apparent as he threw more and more pitches that he was dealing with another problem. His curveball, one of the great weapons of mass destruction in the sport, was not there. 

Per Brooks Baseball, he threw only 15 of them out of 93 pitches. And as ESPN.com’s Keith Law and many others observed, few of them were any good:

This seemed to become as obvious to Cubs hitters as it was to everyone watching at Wrigley Field or at home. They had come out swinging against Kershaw to begin with and only seemed to grow more comfortable once they realized they could sit on his fastball and slider.

Willson Contreras and Anthony Rizzo did the honors of demolishing both pitches. Contreras deposited a hanging slider in the left field bleachers in the fourth inning. Rizzo went even further into the right field bleachers when he jumped on a sidearm fastball in the fifth inning.

“I think that the first thing I saw is the Cubs’ hitters, they had a great game plan tonight,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, per Ken Gurnick and Carrie Muskat of MLB.com. “And there was a couple mistake sliders that they took advantage of. But they were running counts, they used the whole field, and there was traffic all night for Clayton. And he gave it everything he had, but when they did—when he did make a mistake, they made him pay.”

Officially, Saturday’s outing is not the worst postseason performance of Kershaw’s career.

Per ESPN.com, he put up a game score of 39. He’s done worse in two starts since the Dodgers began their run four years ago: Game 6 of the 2013 NLCS against the St. Louis Cardinals and Game 1 of the NLDS against the Cardinals the next year.

But while Kershaw’s latest effort may not be his worst on paper, it may be the worst in practicality. He at least offered glimmers of hope with two shutout innings in the former and six one-run innings in the latter. A glimmer of hope never even appeared on the Chicago horizon Saturday.

Credit where it’s due: There was never a feeling that the Dodgers had the Cubs right where they wanted them even after they took a 2-1 series lead thanks to Kershaw and Rich Hill in Games 2 and 3. Beating a team that won 103 games in the regular season was never going to be that easy. In outscoring the Dodgers 23-6 in the final three games of the series, the Cubs proved just that.

“The better team won the series,” said Roberts, per Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times.

The thing about aces, though, is that they’re supposed to be the equalizers.

A truly great starting pitcher can level any playing field and turn a squad of underdogs into snarling beasts that rip all reasonable expectations to shreds. Madison Bumgarner did it in 2014. Josh Beckett did it in 2003. Et cetera.

Kershaw has the power to do this. It’s not the constant favor of Lady Luck that’s allowed him to carve out a career 2.37 ERA and the best adjusted ERA in history. He is a perfect pitcher, combining excellent stuff with pinpoint command and a competitive fire that can melt flesh right off the bone.

But for the life of him, he just can’t get his many talents to stick in October. And until he does, disappointment will keep finding the Dodgers.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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