The night the Cubs were officially eliminated from the NL Central race, they received another stark reminder about their beleaguered bullpen:
“We’re not going to survive if we don’t have multiple guys we can count on,” manager Craig Counsell said after a 6-3 loss to the Braves.
Counsell’s old team clinched its fourth straight division crown as his current team suffered through another bullpen meltdown at Wrigley Field, righty relievers Jacob Webb and Edward Cabrera each serving up two-run homers in the late innings against a playoff-caliber lineup.
Postseason survival is predicated on that sort of thing not happening, not with any sort of frequency, but that’s been the story for the Cubs down the stretch.
With 10 games left on their regular-season schedule, it’s a wonder which relief pitchers they’ll be able to count on when the lights get even brighter in October.
It’s been a particularly brutal stretch for Webb, who was so good as the team’s go-to reliever earlier in the summer, at one point stringing together 24 consecutive scoreless appearances.
But the game-flipping homer he allowed in the seventh inning Tuesday, sending the Cubs from up a run to down a run, was the fourth long ball he’s allowed in his last eight outings.
Cabrera was in his first relief appearance as a Cub – just back from a lengthy IL stint dealing with blister issues – with the team trying to find out in the season’s waning days if he can be a useful piece of a playoff bullpen.
Though his 2 1/3 innings were mostly good Tuesday, the homer he gave up in the ninth significantly dinged his team’s chances at a comeback.
Of course, plenty contributes to such defeats, and the Cubs’ best-in-baseball bats couldn’t muster more than three runs and five singles on the evening, the final dozen hitters going down in order.
But the glare of September baseball can’t help but illuminate the team’s apparent Achilles’ heel, a relief corps that has been under the magnifying glass since Webb coughed up the first of two back-breaking walk-off homers on a late-August road trip.
Come October, when pitching usage becomes a different beast with everything on the line, it will be impossible to survive performances like this.
“We’ve got to put together 27 outs,” Counsell said. “We’ve got to get guys pitching well, and we’ve got to have guys we can count on, multiple guys we can count on.”