Kuzul

HERZLIYA PITUACH, Israel — On Monday night, Dan Shapiro stood outside the American embassy in Tel Aviv and pressed a button that bathed the edifice in pink to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

If Shapiro, who has served as the United States ambassador to Israel since 2011, had a say, the embassy might next be illuminated in blue and red to honor his beloved Chicago Cubs.

“It probably would have to come out of my pocket,” Shapiro joked at his home here during the wee hours of Thursday morning while watching a live broadcast of the Cubs’ 5–1 win over the Cleveland Indians that squared the 2016 World Series at a game apiece.

Or maybe he could seek a special budgetary allocation from his ultimate boss and fellow Chicago sports fan, President Barack Obama.

Obama, of course, touts his love of the White Sox, the Cubs’ intracity rivals, who broke their own World Series drought in 2005, just over a year before Shapiro began consulting on foreign policy for the then-Illinois senator’s presidential run.

Shapiro said that he and Obama both love their teams while harboring no animosity toward the other Windy City club.

When Obama tweeted congratulations to the Cubs for reaching the World Series, Shapiro retweeted it.

Still, while Shapiro said he appreciates that Obama “comes by his being a White Sox fan honestly,” he wonders if the First Fan sometimes goes too far. 

“When he threw out the first pitch at a [Washington] Nationals game with a White Sox hat, I thought: Really?”

The two men don’t often banter about sports, in person or long distance, and there’s been no Cubs-related smack talk this October.

Not that Shapiro, a Champaign, Illinois, native, is loath to dish some bull—or bear or cub—to everyone else when it comes to his favorite professional franchises.

Last spring, he posted congratulations on Facebook to the Golden State Warriors for breaking the NBA record for wins in a regular season. But it was accompanied by a picture of a T-shirt with the Chicago Bulls logo—the previous record holder—and the caution: “Don’t mean a thing without the ring.”

He’s posted remarks and photos on the Cubs all season long, including while attending two games in July at Wrigley Field. This spot-on comment following Chicago’s World Series Game 1 loss was among them: “One thing I know about [manager] Joe Maddon and these Cubs: They don’t get down over a loss, and they come right back fighting the next day. Jake [Arrieta] is on the mound in Game 2. I like our chances.”

For that game, Shapiro greeted me at 1:30 a.m., about a half-hour before Arrieta‘s first pitch. He sported a Cubs cap and wore the official jersey of Addison Russell, his daughter Merav’s favorite player, over a team T-shirt. Next to the big-screen television in his office, Cubs nesting dolls sat on a shelf, just above Obama’s book, Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters.

Atop a lounge chair were arrayed two Cubs caps, a Cubs yarmulke and a Wrigley Field giveaway “W” towel for waving purposes. Shapiro’s wife, Julie Fisher, a Minnesotan, slept upstairs throughout the game but had thoughtfully placed yellow Post-it notes across the coffee table, one letter handwritten on each. The message?: GO CUBS. THIS IS THE YEAR.

By game’s end, just after 6 a.m. local time, Shapiro, too, was bushed—but giddily so. Indians catcher Roberto Perez grounded to Addison Russell to seal the Cubs’ first victory in 71 years in a World Series game.

Shapiro screamed, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Meg Ryan-in-the deli-like, rushed over to high-five each of his three daughters and led them in an ear-splitting chant of “This. Is. The. Year.” that must have shaken Julie’s bed.

The dude is a regular fan working as an envoy in an important posting. He just happens to be living in a U.S. government-owned mansion in this upscale neighborhood as a result of that posting.

He shares some of those same qualities to the man signing his checks. Obama is “a normal person who happened to become president. Part of that was a guy who liked going to ballgames,” Shapiro said.

“What I have seen of him up close and as a more distant observer is that he is someone who, with all his responsibilities and all on his plate, follows sports. So when teams come to the White House [after winning championships], he’s probably followed the team.”

Shapiro said he has yet to be invited to the White House’s residential quarters to watch any games.

He’d also like to golf with him someday soon. Someone who has is Alan Solow, a longtime Obama donor and a fellow Chicagoan.

When they played in a foursome at Olympia Fields Country Club south of Chicago on Oct. 8, the Cubs-Giants National League Division Series was just getting underway, and sports, not politics, dominated the chatter.

“He was looking forward to watching,” Solow, a lawyer, said of Obama. “There was a lot of banter about what a good team the Cubs were this year and about the Dodgers‘ pitching. Part of the discussion was that baseball is probably more unpredictable in the playoffs than other sports are, because of the impact of pitching.”

Solow, who’s spent time with Obama both in the White House and on the golf course, said the president enjoys being in a sports environment, whether that means attending a playoff game, honoring championship teams at the White House or golfing.

“It was a much more relaxed setting for him, and it’s important to respect his decision to get away from the job and stay away from the hard subjects,” he added, speaking of the Oct. 8 outing.

Shapiro, too, has witnessed Obama’s passion for sports bubble up. Sometimes, that’s occurred in unexpected circumstances. He’s been in the Oval Office when Obama tossed around a football.

Then there was Obama’s visit to Israel in March 2013. Shapiro and other key personnel, including then-National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and Secretary of State John Kerry, were with the president in his hotel suite.

“ESPN was on, and he was tracking the games with his bracket,” Shapiro said of Obama’s March Madness fandom. “We were talking about his next meeting with [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu…and he said, ‘Dan, I want to hear your view of this.’ I forget what the issue was, and I said, ‘Well, Mr. President, I think,’ and he said, ‘Oh, my God, what a dunk!’ And I lost my train of thought.”

If basketball wasn’t uppermost in Shapiro’s mind that March Madness day, it was front and center when he first heard he was on Obama’s radar in early 2007. Shapiro was on the staff of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) when Mark Lippert, who worked for then-Sen. Obama (and now serves as U.S. ambassador to South Korea), recruited him to join the presidential campaign team.

Once the particulars of his advisory role on foreign policy were made clear, Shapiro, aware even then of Obama’s love of hoops, put in an early non-political request.

“I told Mark, ‘All I want is the chance to play basketball with him,'” Shapiro said, adding that the affirmative response “was easier said than done.” It wasn’t until 2010 that his opportunity arose. By then, Shapiro was the National Security Council’s senior director for the Middle East and North Africa. Obama had added a basketball court on the White House’s South Lawn, just a few steps from the NSC’s complex in the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and Shapiro learned of Friday afternoon games David Axelrod, Obama’s senior advisor, arranged.   

“We were shooting around on a half court: me, Axelrod, Gene Sperling and [Michael] McFaul [then-Treasury Department official and then-NSC adviser on Russia, respectively], and on the other end, the president was shooting around with [aide] Reggie Love. Axelrod said to him, ‘Why don’t you run with us one game?’

“I ended up on [Obama’s] team. There’s an interesting dynamic that occurs: a deference to get him the ball. I didn’t embarrass myself. I hit a shot or two and acquitted myself acceptably. I think we won.” “I can say that I played with the president of the United States.”

All Shapiro wants now is for his beloved Cubbies to pull off a historic rebound from 3-1 down and earn an invitation to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. World Series champions traditionally drop by to be feted by the president when on a road trip to play the nearby Baltimore Orioles or Washington Nationals. 

But by next season, Obama will be an ex-president.

Don’t be surprised, then, if Air Force One is dispatched to swoop up the members of a curse-breaking, ‘comeback kid’ Chicago club and deliver them to the White House for a pre-January 20 visit.

Hillel Kuttler covers baseball for Bleacher Report. His work has previously appeared at the New York Times and the Washington Post. Follow Hillel on Twitter @HilleltheScribe.

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If the Chicago Cubs want to be a team of destiny, they better come up with a miracle.

If they don’t, a season in which they won 103 games on their way to their first World Series since 1945 could be over as soon as Sunday. The Cleveland Indians lead the series three games to one.

If the advantage feels even bigger than that, it may be because the latest entry in this Fall Classic was a thumping that only Cleveland fans had an easy time watching.

After winning a 1-0 squeaker in Game 4 on Friday, the Indians took Game 5 on Saturday by a 7-2 final. The Cubs could once again do nothing against Corey Kluber, who regressed to only six one-run innings from his six shutout innings in Game 1. John Lackey and a host of Chicago relievers served up 10 hits. Carlos Santana and Jason Kipnis sent two of those into the Wrigley Field bleachers.

And so, it’s down to this for the Cubs: One more loss, and their trip to the World Series will have proved powerless to stop their championship drought from turning 109 years old.

Oh, there are silver linings, of course.

There are the pitching matchups, for one. Jon Lester will get the ball against Trevor Bauer, who will be on three days’ rest, in Game 5. That’s a mismatch if there ever was one.

“To have a guy that’s [a] been-there, done-that kind of a guy, and been very successful, been a World Series champion, he knows what the feeling is like, he knows what it takes,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said, via Jamal Collier of MLB.com. “It’s definitely comforting to the rest of the group for [Sunday].”

If there’s a Game 6, there will be another mismatch in Jake Arrieta against Josh Tomlin on short rest. If there’s a Game 7, major league ERA leader Kyle Hendricks will go against Kluber, who will be making his second straight start on short rest.

On the other side of the ball, Chicago’s vaunted offense showed more life in Game 4 than the box score suggested.

Dexter Fowler finally got the Cubs’ first home run of the series with his solo dinger off the previously untouchable Andrew Miller, but that could have been the team’s third home run of the night under better conditions. Ben Zobrist and Anthony Rizzo crushed balls that got knocked down by the wind.

And if there is indeed a Game 6, the Cubs know Kyle Schwarber will return to the lineup, as the designated hitter will be re-introduced to the series back at Progressive Field. He was Chicago’s best hitter in the first two games.

There are, however, two things standing in the way of the miracle the Cubs need: history and a team that is playing better baseball.

The easy reference to make in support of Chicago is to the last time a team from Cleveland was involved in a championship series with a 3-1 deficit. Just check Twitter. I’ll wait.

Easy jokes aside, though, 3-1 deficits are no laughing matter in the World Series. There have been 46 teams that have fallen behind 3-1. Only six of them have come back to win.

As Mike Puma of the New York Post noted, the last of those comebacks was three decades ago:

For the Cubs to break the streak, they need to figure out an Indians team that already has them figured out.

It’s not just the wind that’s keeping Chicago from living up to its reputation as one of baseball’s best power-hitting teams. Cleveland pitchers know that hitters have a hard time smacking breaking balls over the fence. Per Baseball Savant, they’ve gone from throwing 23.9 percent breaking balls in the regular season to 38 percent in the postseason. Cubs hitters have had no answer for that.

In what seems to be an offshoot of its struggles to hit the ball over the fence, Chicago has also lost its trademark discipline. Baseball Savant’s figures had it swinging outside the zone only 18.9 percent of the time in the regular season. That number is up to 22.4 percent in the World Series.

Cue Maddon saying this in his postgame press conference Saturday, via MLB.com: “We just need that offensive epiphany somehow to get us pushing in the right direction.”

As Cubs hitters struggle to be themselves, Indians hitters have largely been doing just fine.

They have a .248 team average to Chicago’s .204 and are out-homering the Cubs four to one. They’re taking more disciplined at-bats and benefiting from that with better contact, holding the average exit velocity advantage at 91.1 mph to 86.8 mph.

It helps that manager Terry Francona is pushing all the right buttons. Pinch-hitting Coco Crisp in Game 3 resulted in a game-winning RBI single. Santana rewarded Francona for starting him over Mike Napoli in Game 4 by hitting a game-tying home run.

Meanwhile, Francona’s button-pushing is another thing that’s made life difficult for Cubs hitters.

Whereas Maddon has leaned on relievers not named Pedro Strop, Hector Rondon or Aroldis Chapman, Francona has continued to ride Miller and Cody Allen as much as he can. When he hasn’t used them, he’s pushed the right buttons anyway. Take out Fowler’s dinger off Miller, and Zach McAllister is the only Cleveland reliever to allow an earned run in this series.

“I think our guys have done terrific,” Francona said after Game 4, via MLB.com. “But I think the people that are surprised don’t know our pitchers very well.”

All this is the long way of telling a shorter story. What the Indians are doing to the Cubs is basically the same thing they did to the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays en route to the World Series. That led to seven wins in eight games. Lo and behold, more of the same has them one win from snapping a World Series drought that’s only 40 years younger than Chicago’s.

According to FiveThirtyEight, the odds the Cubs will reverse Cleveland’s stranglehold over this postseason stand at just 15 percent. That number is one of two things.

One: The start of a storybook comeback 108 years in the making—one that will be defined by Chicago taking advantage of favorable pitching matchups and finally finding its offense.

Or two: just another step down toward zero.

Anticlimactic? Maybe. But if it’s a team of destiny you want to see, you’re better off looking at the one from Cleveland.

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

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Kyle Hendricks might win the National League Cy Young Award. He’s MLB‘s reigning ERA king. By any measure, 2016 has been a very good year for the Chicago Cubs right-hander.

On Friday, he has a chance to cement his breakout season and go from very good to immortal by pitching the Cubbies to the championship brink.

Nothing will be decided in Game 3. But with the series knotted 1-1, it’s a pivotal contest. In World Series history, teams with a 2-1 advantage have won it all 56 times and lost just 27 times, per WhoWins.com.

It’s a big game symbolically, too. The North Side is hosting the Fall Classic for the first time since 1945. The ghosts of Wrigley Field will be out in force. A victory would quiet their groaning.

Momentum is fleeting and impossible to quantify. And nothing’s guaranteed, especially against a resilient Cleveland Indians club that hasn’t lost two games in a row since September 28.

Hendricks, however, has worked magic all season on the mound at 1060 W. Addison St.

In 95.1 innings at home in the regular season, Hendricks went 9-2 with a 1.32 ERA. He’s made all three of his postseason starts at Wrigley and posted a 1.65 ERA.

He twirled an absolute masterpiece in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, outdueling Clayton Kershaw and facing the minimum number of hitters over 7.1 shutout frames.

“Starts with maybe the clubhouse, the fans,” Hendricks said of his Wrigley mastery, per Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News. “It just feels like I’m right at home, honestly.” 

That explains why manager Joe Maddon tinkered with his rotation, moving Jake Arrieta up to the No. 2 slot and bumping Hendricks down to No. 3. Arrieta—who wobbled in the second half and the postseason—made his manager look brilliant with a strong showing in Game 2 on Wednesday. 

Now, it’s Hendricks’ turn.

An eighth-round draft pick by the Texas Rangers in 2011, Hendricks was traded to the Cubs for pitcher Ryan Dempster in 2012. He posted a 2.46 ERA in 13 starts with Chicago in 2014, and in 2015 he logged a 3.95 ERA in 180 innings. 

This year, he took a Sonic the Hedgehog-sized leap forward.

He’ll never singe the radar gun; his fastball tops out in the low-90s. Instead, he relies on command—stealing strikes with his curveball, inducing ground balls with his sinker and keeping hitters off balance with his plus changeup.

CBS Chicago’s Chris Emma contrasted Hendricks’ numbers to those of his Cleveland counterpart:

Hendricks forced ground balls at a 48.4 percent rate this season, and has a home run-to-fly ball rate of just 9.3 percent, good for third in baseball. His Game 3 foe, Josh Tomlin, was third-worst in home runs per nine innings at 1.86 and fourth-worst in HR/FB at 17.7 percent.

One could think the Cubs have the edge on the mound for Game 3 of the World Series.

To be fair, Tomlin is 2-0 with a 2.53 ERA in 10.2 postseason innings and hasn’t allowed a homer yet.

It helps that Hendricks is backed by the best defense in baseball. But the Greg Maddux comparisons seem less outlandish with each superlative outing.

Just ask Greg Maddux.

“He does all those things usually better than the guys he’s facing,” Maddux said of Hendricks, per ESPN.com’s Jesse Rogers. “If it was a radar contest, then why play the game, right? Velocity is nice, but command and movement are better.”

Hendricks has next to zero history with the Indians. Among Cleveland hitters on the World Series roster, he’s faced only Coco Crisp, who has gone 0-for-3 against him.

A lack of familiarity often favors the pitcher, at least the first time through the lineup. Toss in Hendricks’ home dominance and the pent-up energy that’ll inevitably be behind him, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a legendary October showing.

If you think the enormity of the moment will speed things up for the 26-year-old, his skipper begs to differ.

“I’ve never seen him rush through anything,” Maddon said, per Paul Skrbina of the Chicago Tribune. “I’m sure he takes his time brushing his teeth. I would imagine his cup of coffee takes two hours to drink.”

A low pulse under pressure. A sparkling home record. A chance to propel the Cubs one step closer to a parade and confetti 108 years in the offing.

This is a Moment, capital “M.” Hendricks simply needs to seize it.

All statistics current as of Thursday and are courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted.

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CHICAGO — The old girl is dressed to the nines. Wrigley Field, on deck to host her first World Series game Friday night since Oct. 10, 1945, is crackling with energy.

And when the Chicago Cubs take the field to face the Cleveland Indians in Game 3, this shrine of a ballpark, which has produced so many memorable afternoons and, later, evenings, will author a first: An African-American wearing a Cubs uniform will play in a World Series game in Wrigley Field.

The Cubs have not been here since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947.

Which means, well, gasp, yes.

It is amazing to even attempt to rationally wrap our minds around it. How we got here, how in the name of Martin Luther King Jr., or even Ernie Banks, this hasn’t happened before in Wrigley, is a testament to a century of futility for the Cubs.

“Ernie and I tried, but we didn’t get there,” Cubs Hall of Famer Billy Williams said.

Williams was standing in the visitors’ dugout at Cleveland’s Progressive Field as he spoke, beaming, looking at his beloved franchise in a real World Series, smiling at the thought of leadoff man Dexter Fowler, shortstop Addison Russell, outfielder Jason Heyward and reliever Carl Edwards Jr. becoming the first black men to play in a World Series wearing a Cubs uniform in any venue.

“The World Series itself is great, but when you look at all the things that have happened in baseball and then you look and see that four African-Americans are playing in a World Series for the Cubs for the first time in all those many years, it’s really something,” he continued.

“It gives you two thrills: To be here at the World Series, and to see those individuals play.”

That it comes at a time of more jagged racial tension in our country’s history, with the Black Lives Matter movement pushing for change and policemen under fire, might not make the debuts of these four Cubs any more significant. But it sure makes them more deeply felt.

“Just knowing Dex and J-Hey, and knowing C.J. [Edwards Jr.], we’ve always been the type of people to never settle for the everyday usual,” said Russell, who became the first African-American to collect a World Series RBI for the Cubs when he drew a bases-loaded walk to push across the fifth run in Chicago’s 5-1 Game 2 victory.

“I think that’s what has driven us. We didn’t have a choice to pick the ethnic background that we have, but it is what it is, and we are who we are, and we try to make the best of it that we can.

“Black Lives Matter is a huge movement. I think African-Americans need to be heard, for sure.”

Russell added that it is “nice on paper” to be able to say that he’s one of the first four African-Americans to play in a World Series for the Cubs. Fowler, who became the first black player to play for the Cubs in a Fall Classic when he led off Game 1 by taking a called third strike against Cleveland ace Corey Kluber, said it was “awesome” to play the role of a trailblazer.

Heyward, the free agent who signed an eight-year, $184 million deal but has lost his starting spot because of a prolonged slump, downplayed the racial angle while acknowledging the larger moment.

“I haven’t thought about it other than we come in every day and prepare as players to do what we can to help our team win,” Heyward said. “We go out there on a daily basis, representing our family name, representing our organization, representing our city, and that’s the bottom line.

“We were born African-Americans, and there’s nothing we can control there. It’s been that way our whole lives, so it’s not surprising to say it’s a first.

“It’s unique and cool and, I guess, humbling to be a part of it for the first time. But we’re just here by chance, you know? Everything happens for a reason.”

What is not by chance, and what is instructive about this particular group of Cubs, is how they’ve ascended racial boundaries all summer long.

Most of the team—black, white, Latin—gathered in Fowler’s Cincinnati hotel room in April to celebrate Jake Arrieta’s no-hitter earlier that day.

Heyward, in a classy pay-it-forward move thanking a veteran who had taken him under his wing when they both were with the Atlanta Braves organization, has footed the bill for David Ross to be upgraded to a hotel suite on every Cubs road trip this year. That has continued into the postseason, Ross said, a gesture that is especially meaningful now because Ross’ wife, children and parents have been traveling in October, and the suite gives them all a place to stay and spread out.

Ross spoke at length of Heyward’s generosity Thursday.

To Heyward, being kind and generous is the way everybody should behave, no matter their ethnicity.

“We’re in a World Series,” Heyward, 27 and a native of Georgia, said. “I know I’m an African-American, so I go represent the best way I can as a person with my teammates and my friends and in terms of the organization because you know you’ve got a lot of different things from a lot of different people and a lot of people are watching. That’s the bottom line. Just treat people how you want to be treated and go from there.”

For reliever Edwards, 25 and a native of Prosperity, South Carolina, his place in Cubs history is humbling.

“It’s pretty awesome,” he said. “We’ve seen Robinson come through, and I’m not saying we’re just like him, but…me and Dex and J-Hey and Addison—this is a great thing to have on our resume.”

Edwards is aware enough of the moment, both playing in his first World Series and understanding the social significance of it, that he plans to keep the cleats he wears whenever he makes his first appearance. In fact, he figures he’ll probably take a few other things home for his archives too because “this doesn’t happen to everybody.”

He’s thought about the timing of this moment and the social forces at work as a backdrop.

“Back home, of course, they put up the Black Lives Matter posts,” Edwards said. “But now everybody at home is putting up my picture on Facebook and social media because it’s something positive.

“Black Lives Matter—everybody is thinking that’s a negative. This is something positive that people can hang on to.”

He figures the kids back in his hometown can benefit from his experience because “if they see somebody from home doing it, it gives them more confidence.”

As Russell said: “It’s absolutely meaningful to us, to our families and, obviously, to our bloodline. I think our ethnicity, we wear it on our shoulders. Whenever you get around a group of people that come from so many different backgrounds, you have to be rooted a little bit, I think, whenever it comes to your ethnicity.”

And so as they step on to the Wrigley Field lawn and move just a bit deeper into Cubs lore, this is one of the most significant steps yet.

“Sports itself has a way of bringing a lot of injustices to the forefront,” Williams, 78, and a native of Whistler, Alabama said. “When you look on the field and you see African-Americans, you see whites, you see Italians, you see all races of people out on the baseball field, and that’s why it helps so much to bring about justice in this world.”

Recently, Williams said he watched the film 42, the biopic of Robinson’s life story. In it, there is a scene in Cincinnati in which Pee Wee Reese walks over and throws his arm around Robinson in a show of support as the fans showered him with racial taunts and other epithets.

It reminded him of his own Hall of Fame induction in 1987 and after, when, he said, “I used to go to the Hall of Fame, and I wanted to find Pee Wee Reese. And when I found him, I would put my arms around him just like he did to Jackie Robinson. And it gave me a great thrill.”

Yeah, as Williams said, it is great to see. Both the Cubs in the World Series and doing it in living, vivid color.

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

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The World Series is returning to Chicago’s North Side for the first time since 1945. That’s the lead storyline ahead of Friday’s pivotal Game 3, which is scheduled to be aired at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.

Here’s an intriguing subplot: Unlikely Cubs offensive catalyst Kyle Schwarber will be on the bench.

Schwarber was not medically cleared to play the field Thursday, nearly seven months after tearing the ACL and LCL in his left knee, per the Cubs’ official Twitter feed. 

He served as the designated hitter in the first two games of the World Series, and he did so with distinction.

Specifically, Schwarber went 3-for-7 with a double, two walks and two RBI. If you want the small-sample slash line, that equates to .429/.556/.571.

Not bad for a man who hadn’t seen big league pitching since April 7 and had only a brief Arizona Fall League stint and reps in the cage to prepare.

After delivering an RBI single in Game 2, Schwarber delivered the expletive heard ’round the world (warning: link contains NSFW language). The dude is hot, plain and simple.

“He should just skip spring training next year,” Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant said, per the New York Times‘ Tyler Kepner. “He’ll be fine. Just jump right in the World Series and have success. No big deal.”

Naturally, there was noise about Schwarber’s strapping on a glove as the scene shifted to Chicago. He hasn’t been a plus outfield defender in his limited MLB experience, as his negative-0.3 ultimate zone rating attests. 

But slotting him in left field—particularly in Game 3 with ground-ball specialist Kyle Hendricks on the bump—seemed like a worthwhile trade-off. Factor in the five home runs he hit in the 2015 playoffs, and Schwarber is emerging as a nascent Mr. October.

Now, he’ll be glued to the pine, available only as a pinch hitter until and unless the series returns to Cleveland. 

It makes sense. This kid is 23 years old and a major piece of the Cubs’ long-term plans. They refused to move him at the trade deadline, even for top-shelf talent like Indians bullpen wizard Andrew Miller. Why would they jeopardize his future now?

Still, Schwarber’s presence was a literal game-changer for Chicago—one of those autumn miracles that defies explanation.

He’s moving the needle in the batter’s box and in the clubhouse, as Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan noted:

Does that mean his absence will dull the Cubs’ momentum?

Chicago has plenty of weapons. Bryant has just one hit in the World Series but boasts a combined .845 postseason OPS. Javier Baez is hitting .319 in the playoffs while flashing ludicrous leather at second base. After a slow start, first baseman Anthony Rizzo has six RBI and eight hits in his last five playoff games, including two home runs and three doubles. 

Overall, Chicago paces the postseason field with 53 runs scored. Cleveland, by contrast, has scored 34.

At the same time, this Cubs offense has been mercurial. They’ve been shut out three times in the playoffs, including in Game 1 against the Indians. 

Losing Schwarber’s power and plate discipline stings. Right fielder Jason Heyward is hitting a paltry .067 in the postseason. Chris Coghlan and Jorge Soler, who started in his stead in Games 1 and 2, are hitless.

With Schwarber out, the Cubs will roll with Ben Zobrist in left, Dexter Fowler in center and some combination of the Heyward/Coghlan/Soler troika in right.

Again, that doesn’t mean the Cubbies are doomed. They had the best home record in baseball during the regular season at 57-24. And if the Indians do win a game or more at Wrigley, Schwarber can DH for Games 6 and 7 if necessary.

This is the World Series, however, when every twist and wrinkle is magnified.

The Cubs got one of their best young hitters back in inspiring, dramatic fashion. Now, paradoxically, they’ll lose him on their home turf.

It may not swing the outcome. But it’s a subplot worth following.

All statistics current as of Thursday and courtesy of FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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The 2016 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians shifts to Wrigley Field for Games 3-5 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and the North Siders will not have the luxury of starting one of their impact players from the first two games.

According to the team’s Twitter account, Kyle Schwarber was not medically cleared to play the outfield with the designated-hitter role no longer an option in the National League park:

Schwarber tore his ACL and LCL in April but worked his way back in time to DH in the first two games in Cleveland, which the teams split.

Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein said Schwarber “pushed back” but ultimately understood the decision from the medical side of things, per Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune. Epstein also said “I’m in awe of what he did” when discussing the power hitter’s comeback.

Schwarber talked about the decision, per Yahoo Sports’ Big League Stew: “It’s not disappointing at all. It was a long shot at the most. Facts are facts. I just couldn’t physically do it.”

Bruce Levine of 670 The Score in Chicago pointed out Schwarber said he would be ready to pinch hit if necessary.

Chicago will surely feel the loss in its lineup. Baseball Tonight put his postseason performance through the first two years of his career into historical perspective:

Schwarber went 3-for-7 in the first two games in Cleveland with a double off the wall, two RBI, two walks and a run scored. He also drilled five home runs in nine postseason games last year for a Chicago team that advanced to the National League Championship Series before losing to the New York Mets.

The numbers in the first two games this year would be impressive if he played the entire season. They are even more astounding considering he tallied a mere four at-bats all year before his injury.

While this is a setback for the Cubs on paper, they still won an MLB-best 103 games during the regular season and reached the World Series largely without Schwarber‘s presence on the field. Just having him as a potential pinch hitter is more of a boost than even the team’s most optimistic fan could have realistically expected following his injury.

Chicago has a plethora of options to use in left field, including the versatile Ben Zobrist, the powerful Jorge Soler, Willson Contreras, Albert Almora Jr. and Chris Coghlan.

They will also have Schwarber looming as one of the most dangerous pinch hitters in World Series history.

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CLEVELAND — Don’t worry. Hitting savant Kyle Schwarber isn’t Superman all down the line. In some respects, he’s just like you and me.       

Take the private plane that winged him back to the Chicago Cubs on Monday night, his first trip to the majors since the devastating knee injury in early April. OK, so the private plane part might not be like you and me. But the accompanying boredom was.

“It was a long three hours,” Schwarber said.

Three hours and a million miles. That’s how long his trip back to the big leagues was this week. Private plane or no, the Wi-Fi was spotty and unworkable. He tried to watch one of his favorite television shows, The Blacklist, but no dice.

So what he had was plenty of time to think. As he reviewed his painful and laborious summer, there was no way he could envision what was up ahead.

But in one area, he had an idea.

Whack!

After not facing major league pitching since April 7, Schwarber stepped into the World Series with aplomb. After rapping a Game 1 double Tuesday, he knocked in two Game 2 runs to key the Cubs to a 5-1 win over the Cleveland Indians on Wednesday night to even the 2016 World Series at one game apiece.

Thwack!

The man who went 0-for-4 during the regular season before blowing out his knee against the Diamondbacks in Arizona is 3-for-7 with two walks and two RBI in nine plate appearances in these two games.

“I can see why Theo sent a plane for him,” Cleveland manager Terry Francona quipped, referring to Theo Epstein, the Cubs’ president of baseball operations. “I would too.

“That’s a lot to ask. But special players can do special things.”

It’s absurd, is what it is. You have a 23-year-old kid who has only played in 71 career MLB games at this point, essentially missed an entire season, missed the first two rounds of the postseason, and Chicago ushered him straight into a World Series.

“Most teams wouldn’t even do that,” Cubs second baseman/left fielder Ben Zobrist said. “No one else in history has done that, right?

“And to get hits in the World Series? It’s just crazy. It really is.”

Yes, Schwarber envisioned this. Well, sort of.

“You want to visualize what it’s going to be like when you come back so you’re not thrown off by what happens when you’re there,” he said. “You want to put yourself in good situations in your head, and hopefully they play out in the field.

“Visualization is a very powerful tool, and I believe in that.”

So instead of watching The Blacklist as he became the first player in history to jump from the Arizona Fall League’s Mesa Solar Sox straight into a World Series, he envisioned hits. He pictured success. He dreamed a thousand dreams over again, the ones he imagined when he was a kid, the same dreams other kids who get bored on plane rides dream. World Series, game on the line, runners on the bases, here comes Schwarber to the plate…

Crack!

It was early April when Schwarber blew out his left knee, and it was mid-April when he had a full reconstruction of his ACL ligament and a repair of his LCL ligament. The surgery was performed by Dr. Daniel Cooper, the team physician for the Dallas Cowboys, and the upshot of it was, work hard and you’ll be good as new next spring, kid.

All summer, as the Cubs played, Schwarber worked. His goal, he said, was to “dominate the day.”

“It was just constant grind,” he said. “There were days when I wasn’t feeling it.”

On those days, when the Cubs were home and in the clubhouse while Schwarber was rehabbing, players by the handful would look to pick him up. Led by reliever Pedro Strop, they would tell him, “You’ll be back by the World Series.” You know, well-meaning things to boost a friend’s confidence. But stuff maybe both of you know is a long shot.

When the Cubs were in Los Angeles during Games 3, 4 and 5 of the National League Championship Series against the Dodgers, the long shot moved onto their doorstep. At his six-month appointment, doctors cleared him to hit. Schwarber immediately phoned Epstein and asked for a chance. The Cubs sent him to the Arizona Fall League to see some pitching.

So now, Schwarber suddenly is locked in a battle with his second colossal problem of the year. Now, he faces reporters, and they ask him questions like the leadoff query following Game 2: Not to be disrespectful to anyone, Kyle, but is this game so easy that you can take six months off and do this?

Schwarber listened and grimaced.

“No, it’s not that easy, first off,” he said. “Baseball’s a crazy game. It will do crazy things to you.”

It will, and it has. Nobody outworks this kid. Ask any of the Cubs; they’ll tell you he was the first one in the clubhouse every day covered in sweat even though he had no chance of playing for months. For Schwarber, every day was Groundhog Day.

Work ethic? Check this out: During his brief time in Arizona, where he went 1-for-6 with one double and two walks for the Solar Sox, before and after the two games he played, he says he tracked roughly 1,300 pitches off of a pitching machine.

“I tried to set it to the nastiest setting that I could, to where it would be a really sharp break, just to train my eyes all over again,” he said.

“He’s insatiable with his work,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said.

Man, it shows. In Game 1 against Corey Kluber, who threw some of the filthiest pitches the Cubs have seen all season, Schwarber worked a full count in his first at-bat before striking out, scorched a double to right field his next time up and then battled for six pitches to draw a full-count walk in his third plate appearance against Kluber.

He hadn’t faced major league pitching since April 7, yet against a man who won the 2014 American League Cy Young Award, Schwarber battled as well as any other Cub.

“You see how he’s taking pitches that are just borderline,” Maddon said. “And that’s probably the most amazing part. Hitting the ball is one thing, but you can see he’s not jumpy. He’s seeing borderline pitches, staying off a ball, he’s not check-swinging and offering.

“That’s the part that’s really impressive to me.”

You can see why in July, when many folks thought acquiring Aroldis Chapman from the New York Yankees would cost them Schwarber, among other pieces, the Cubs figured out a path to the trade to keep him.

In July 2015, he was the MVP of the Futures Game. His uncle, Thomas Schwarber, pitched for Ohio State and in the Detroit Tigers system. Kyle, though, opted to attend Indiana University because he knew, despite his success as a middle linebacker at Middletown (Ohio) High School and all the recruiters who were wooing him, he wanted to play baseball. At Indiana, he could.

As recently as August 2015, he told me he still missed playing football because of the “physical factor.” Meaning: He missed hitting people.

But don’t think the football background contributed to his plow-forward determination through rehab this summer.

“No, I think it’s just my personality,” the Cubs’ first-round draft pick in 2014 told me Wednesday night. “That helps more than anything.”

He’s a keeper, in so many ways.

“You saw how he jacks everybody up,” Maddon said of the two RBI Wednesday. “Those couple of big hits he got, again, really, Anthony Rizzo responded well to it. The whole group did. It makes your lineup longer. It makes it thicker. It makes it better.

“Ben Zobrist is seeing better pitches right now because of that, too, I believe.”

The Cubs won 103 games this summer without Schwarber, so the natural question now is, how much better are they with him?

“Good question,” Zobrist said, pausing for a moment to ponder. “I don’t know. I think he certainly adds wins to the team. You talk about that WAR statistic, whatever…he probably would have added some wins to the equation if we had him all year, but we didn’t. He worked his tail off, and it’s huge.”

Third inning, Cubs clinging to a 1-0 lead with Rizzo on second and Zobrist on first. Schwarber got the green light on a 3-0 Trevor Bauer pitch and drilled it up the middle to score Rizzo.

“I was thinking, ‘Please swing,'” Rizzo said. “On 3-and-0, the pitcher doesn’t want to walk you, so he usually throws it down the middle of the plate.”

Said Kris Bryant: “Pretty much everybody here has the 3-and-0 green light, but it takes some guts to do that. It was awesome to see. I love when guys swing at 3-and-0.”

Yes, as Maddon said, you can see how Schwarber jacks everyone up. So now as this World Series heads for Chicago, will the kid be in the lineup Friday night to help jack up a Wrigley Field crowd already salivating at hosting its first World Series game since 1945?

As of Wednesday, doctors hadn’t cleared Schwarber to play defense. Maddon said he has total faith that the kid can play defense. The questions are, what about lateral movement? Quick stops? Change of direction?

“Those are the kinds of things I don’t know anything about,” Maddon said.

Best bet: The Cubs keep Schwarber out of the outfield at home, and Maddon picks a big moment to send him to the plate as a pinch hitter.

But that’s all for Game 3 Friday. As the rain poured down late Wednesday night, Schwarber and his teammates headed for their flight home, an airplane that certainly was going to have good Wi-Fi and better company for Schwarber. His long road back has delivered him into the World Series.

What a place to be.

“Hey, man, I’m living the dream,” Schwarber said. “We’re playing in the World Series; what else can you ask for? I’m just going to keep riding the wave until it ends.”

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

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.       

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The postseason of the bullpens ran into an everlasting truth in the first two games of the World Series.

The team with the better starting pitcher still wins most games. And the team with more good starting pitchers has an edge over the team that doesn’t have enough.

Officially, this World Series is tied at a win apiece after Wednesday night’s 5-1 Chicago Cubs victory in Game 2. Realistically, the Cubs have a significant edge over the Cleveland Indians for the same reason they had a big edge in Game 2.

Overall, their starting pitchers are better.

Maybe you didn’t see it in Game 1, because Corey Kluber is a true ace who was able to outpitch Cubs star Jon Lester. You sure did see it in Game 2, because while Cubs starter Jake Arrieta was a perfect fit for the assignment, Trevor Bauer was just an Indians version of Julio Urias or Kenta Maeda.

Remember them? They were the guys the Los Angeles Dodgers had to send to the mound in Games 4 and Game 5 of the NLCS after back-to-back shutouts put the Cubs in a 2-1 hole in the series.

Urias went 3.2 innings. The Dodgers lost big.

Maeda went 3.2 innings. The Dodgers lost big.

Soon enough, the Cubs were out of the hole and headed to the World Series.

So there the Cubs were Wednesday, trying to recover from their Game 1 loss to Kluber. They turned to Arrieta, who won a Cy Young Award last year. The Indians went to Bauer, who has talent but can’t always harness it.

Bauer went 3.2 innings. Guess who won big?

It helped, obviously, that Arrieta didn’t give up a hit for the first five innings. It helped that the Cubs had Kyle Schwarber, whose miraculous return looks more amazing by the day.

But on a night where the cold weather made pitching difficult, the Cubs had a starter who was up for the job. The Indians didn’t.

Arrieta threw too many pitches (98 in 5.2 innings), and he admitted to Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal that the cold weather kept him from getting a consistent feel of the ball.

“I did my best just to make some pitches,” he said.

That’s the difference between a guy who has won a Cy Young and a guy who has good stuff but is still far from figuring things out. Arrieta made pitches to get himself out of trouble, while Bauer kept making pitches that got him into trouble.

For all the questions after Game 1 about whether Andrew Miller’s 46 pitches would keep him out of Game 2, what really kept him out of Game 2 was the starting pitching mismatch. By making sure the Indians never got the lead, Arrieta kept Miller safely stowed away in the Indians bullpen.

Miller could still have a major impact on this World Series. So could Kluber, with the Indians making plans to start him on short rest in Game 4 and thus have him available to start a Game 7 (also on short rest).

But it’s going to take more than the two of them for the Indians to win it. They’re going to need a good performance from Josh Tomlin, who starts Game 3 against National League ERA champ Kyle Hendricks. They’re going to need someone to give them a chance in a Game 5 and a Game 6.

The Cubs have four legitimate World Series starters, with John Lackey set to go in Game 4. The Indians would have had the same thing if Danny Salazar (forearm) and Carlos Carrasco (hand) hadn’t got hurt in September.

It’s a credit to this team that it got this far without Carrasco and Salazar (who returned for the World Series and pitched out of the bullpen Wednesday). They deserve their place in the World Series, and they still could win it.

As big an edge as the Cubs starters have on paper, it’s no bigger than the edge Florida Marlins ace Kevin Brown had over Chad Ogea in Games 2 and 6 of the 1997 World Series. Ogea won both of those games and would have been the World Series MVP if the Indians had held on in Game 7.

The Indians are going to need another Ogea this week, another relative unknown to shine. Otherwise, the Cubs’ rotation edge will likely play out the way it did Wednesday night.

They had the better starting pitcher. They won the game.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.

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Jake Arrieta, line one is for you. It’s destiny calling—and it’s urgent.

Don’t worry. We’re not going to get too melodramatic after the Chicago Cubs‘ dispiriting 6-0 loss to the Cleveland Indians in Game 1 of the World Series at Progressive Field on Tuesday.

Wednesday’s Game 2, which will begin an hour early at 7:08 p.m. ET on Fox because of the threat of rain, isn’t a must-win for Chicago.

It’s a best-of-seven series; the math is simple.

It is, however, a really-should-win, as well as an opportunity for Arrieta to overcome his checkered postseason past.

Overall, Arrieta owns a 4.11 ERA in 30.2 career playoff innings. That screams mediocrity, but the story is far more complex.

All of Arrieta’s postseason appearances have come over the past two seasons with Chicago. In the 2015 National League Wild Card Game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, he twirled nine shutout innings with no walks and 11 strikeouts.

That same year, Arrieta won the NL Cy Young Award with a 1.77 ERA and 236 strikeouts in 229 innings. Still, he wobbled in his next two postseason starts.

He surrendered four earned runs in 5.2 innings in Game 3 of the division series against the St. Louis Cardinals, which the Cubs ultimately won 8-6. Then he gave up four earned runs in five innings in a Game 2 loss in the National League Championship Series to the New York Mets.

The Cubs were swept in that series. As for Arrieta, the sample-size explanation jibed at the time.

Arrieta, however, slumped in the second half of 2016 and particularly in September and October, when he allowed 27 hits, 11 walks and 15 earned runs in 29.1 innings.

That fecklessness leaked into the playoffs. He yielded 12 hits and six earned runs in his starts in Game 3 of the division series versus the San Francisco Giants and Game 3 of the NLCS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, both Cubs losses.

Chicago maintained its momentum and nailed down the franchise’s first pennant since 1945 thanks to an offense that leads all postseason qualifiers with 48 runs scored and a pitching staff that has gotten superlative performances from the likes of Jon Lester and Kyle Hendricks. 

Lester went unbeaten in the Cubs’ series against San Francisco and Los Angeles, rekindling the October magic that defined his stint with the Boston Red Sox, but he took the loss in Game 1 of the World Series.

Hendricks, meanwhile, mustered a sparkling performance in the clinching Game 6 against the Dodgers on Saturday, facing the minimum number of hitters through 7.1 shutout innings.

Skipper Joe Maddon and the Cubs brain trust, however, opted to push Hendricks back to Game 3 of the World Series, likely to afford him extra rest and exploit the 1.32 ERA he posted at Wrigley this season.

With veteran John Lackey locked in for Game 4, that leaves Arrieta on the hill for Game 2. Fox Sports’ Jon Morosi suggested the Cubs’ rotation was set up “nicely.”

It’s hyperbole to say Arrieta is all that stands between Chicago and a 2-0 series deficit. Indians relievers Andrew Miller and Cody Allen, however, demonstrated again Tuesday that an early Tribe lead is nearly insurmountable.

Cleveland ace Corey Kluber threw six shutout innings and made strikeout history, so dish credit in his direction.

Miller and Allen, though, recorded the final nine outs, six via strikeout. They’ve now combined for 22.1 scoreless playoff frames in 2016 with 39 whiffs.

Arrieta’s directive is to tamp down early offense. He needs to keep Cleveland off the board and give the Cubs a chance to draw first blood, neutralizing the threat of the Miller/Allen two-headed demon.

Arrieta posted a 3.59 ERA on the road this season compared to a 2.62 mark at home. So Maddon isn’t exactly playing the splits.

Instead, it’s time for the 30-year-old right-hander to conjure the guy who won the Senior Circuit’s highest pitching honor a season ago and authored two of MLB‘s last three no-hitters.

“It’s why you play the whole season,” Arrieta said, per Paul Skrbina of the Chicago Tribune. “To be in this position.”

Arrieta’s drop-off wasn’t the result of some cataclysmic event. He sported a 1.56 ERA at the end of May. Overall, however, his command fizzled, as he issued 76 walks in the regular season compared to 48 in 2015.

“It’s hard to repeat what he did last year,” Cubs catcher Miguel Montero said, per USA Today‘s Josh Peter. “He hasn’t pitched as well, but the stuff is still there.”

The point is, he’s not broken. He’s merely on the fritz. This is the time of year when unlikely heroes rise and stars wake from their slumber.

Locked and loaded as they were in Game 1, Indians hitters own a .219 postseason average. That number drops to .209 against righties.

“I would say the only problem Jake Arrieta has is excellent levels,” super-agent Scott Boras said of his client Oct. 18, per Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune. “It’s the old story. Most people have a penthouse. He happens to have two or three floors. That’s where Jake is. Any one of the floors, we’re fine with.”

The Cubs would be fine with a quality outing and a chance to hand it off to their own pen, including flamethrower Aroldis Chapman.

Arrieta’s counterpart in Game 2, right-hander Trevor Bauer, is no sure bet as he recovers from a freak drone injury. 

Arrieta has every opportunity to be the better starter. He has a shot at high-profile redemption and an automatic pass to the annals of Cubbies lore.

Destiny is calling. Now, we need an answer.

All statistics current as of Tuesday and courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted. 

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At the risk of going out on a limb for a team that hasn’t won a World Series in 108 years or even scored in a World Series in 71 years…

Don’t worry. The Chicago Cubs still have this.

Game 1 of the World Series on Tuesday did not go as the Cubs planned. They presumably planned on preventing the Cleveland Indians from scoring runs while netting a few of their own against Corey Kluber and friends. Instead, Cleveland won going away, 6-0.

And so, the Cubs are still looking for their first World Series win since beating the Detroit Tigers in Game 6 of the 1945 Fall Classic. They’re also still looking for their first World Series run since the eighth inning of Game 7.

More troubling than that history, though, is the recent history of teams that have lost the first game of the World Series. Take it away, Jayson Stark of ESPN.com:

The latest odds don’t paint as ugly a picture, but they’re still not good. According to FanGraphs, Cleveland now has a 54.1 percent chance of winning its first World Series in 68 years.

But enough of these scary numbers.

Just because the Indians landed the first blow doesn’t mean everything has changed. The Cubs were heavy favorites with a 64.5 percent chance of victory coming into the series. And even if they’re not officially favorites after dropping Game 1, that should change quickly.

There are good reasons the Cubs lost Game 1, including two homers by Roberto Perez and stellar relief pitching by—who else?—Andrew Miller and Cody Allen. But the Cubs also played better than the 6-0 final indicates. Without Perez’s homers, the Indians would have needed a swinging bunt by Jose Ramirez and a Brandon Guyer hit-by-pitch to score runs. Cubs hitters had some good at-bats, especially against Miller in his two innings of work.

“We didn’t play as bad as that looked,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said afterward, via Richard Justice of MLB.com.

The deciding factor in Game 1 was Kluber‘s pitching. The 2014 Cy Young winner pitched like his best self, giving up only four hits and striking out nine in six scoreless frames.

You could have seen this coming. The Cubs are a patient team that specializes in working pitchers. Kluber is a strike-thrower with great stuff. He beat the Cubs the same way Clayton Kershaw and Rich Hill temporarily silenced them in the National League Championship Series: by going right at them.

Assuming Mother Nature doesn’t wash the game away, the Cubs will get a nice change of pace against Trevor Bauer in Game 2.

Bauer’s 4.26 ERA this season kept his career ERA safely above 4.00. Recently, his issues with walks (3.5 BB/9) and home runs (1.2 HR/9) came back to haunt him in the second half. He’s just the kind of pitcher the Cubs, No. 1 in the National League in walks and top five in homers, can handle.

And if an offensive barrage doesn’t result in an early shower for Bauer, the finger injury that has already taken him off the mound once this October could do the trick.

Either way, an early exit from Bauer would spell trouble for Cleveland. It would require Francona to get the best out of his bullpen. That basically means the best out of Miller, and he likely won’t be up to it after throwing 46 pitches in Game 1.

As such, the Cubs evening this series could be a matter of them getting quality innings out of Jake Arrieta. That’s an iffier proposal than it was this time a year ago. But he’s still a far safer bet than Bauer and Johnny Wholestaff.

The dominoes will line up nicely if the Cubs do win Game 2. They’ll be heading back to Wrigley Field needing just three more wins, and with the matchups in their favor.

Game 3 will feature Kyle Hendricks against Josh Tomlin. That’s a pitcher with the lowest ERA in baseball (2.13) and an even lower ERA at home (1.32) up against a pitcher who’s good, but who has only one of Kluber‘s qualities. Tomlin is a strike-thrower, but not with overwhelming swing-and-miss stuff.

Game 4 will be John Lackey up against either Kluber on three days’ rest, Ryan Merritt or Danny Salazar, or some combination of Merritt and Salazar. Either way, that game will also favor Chicago.

Kluber was not sharp when he started on short rest in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, surrendering two runs in five innings. Merritt is sort of a left-handed Tomlin. Salazar is like Bauer, except wilder and minus any stamina after being on the disabled list since early September.

If the Cubs force a Game 5, their rotation would be flipped back over again for Jon Lester. He still has a 2.61 ERA even after allowing three earned runs in five and two-thirds innings in Game 1, and even that line overstates how much he struggled.

If the series shifts back to Cleveland for Games 6 and 7, the Cubs could rest easy knowing Kyle Schwarber is back.

Just six months after he suffered a major knee injury, the Cubs appeared to be indulging in wishful thinking when they threw Schwarber into their Game 1 lineup. After taking only a couple of at-bats in the Arizona Fall League, making him face Kluber seemed cruel and/or unusual.

Instead, Schwarber darn near took him deep.

That wasn’t Schwarber‘s only bright moment. He also worked Miller for a walk in the seventh inning, becoming just the second left-handed hitter to draw a walk off the lefty relief ace this season.

“You could see on the finish sometimes maybe the brace grabs him just a little bit. I kind of noticed that,” Maddon said of Schwarber in his postgame presser, via MLB.com. “Otherwise there was no kind of negative atmosphere surrounding his at-bats. I thought they were outstanding, actually.”

Although Schwarber can only DH in games at Progressive Field, that still makes him another weapon in Maddon‘s arsenal for this series. The rest of it, meanwhile, is a reminder of why the Cubs were such heavy favorites coming into the series.

The Cubs didn’t win 103 games this season by accident. They had the best starting rotation. They gained one of the best bullpens in the second half. They had one of the best offenses. They had the best defense.

The Indians are awfully good, but not as deep. That didn’t matter in Game 1 because they mostly beat the Cubs with their best guys. They can’t do that in every game. As this series involves more players, the more it will favor the Cubs.

So, there. Now that I’ve gone and stood up for the Cubs, what could possibly go wrong?

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

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