The Cubs have the bats to win the World Series. They’re leading the major leagues in runs per game. They’re bashing everything that isn’t nailed down over outfield fences. Alex Bregman is piping hot, joining National League MVP frontrunner Pete Crow-Armstrong in spearheading a crooked-number fest. Offensively, this team is — for now, anyway — set like a clock.
Once shortstop Dansby Swanson is up and running again — any time in September will do — the big leagues’ best defense should be good to go, too.
But what about the Cubs’ starting pitching? With the horses they have in the stable — including Kevin Gausman, who shoved for seven shutout innings Monday at the Diamondbacks — this can’t be labeled a weakness. Fellow trade-deadline acquisition Clay Holmes is off to a strong start with the North Siders. And the newcomers have quality company, no one more prominent than 35-year-old lefty Matthew Boyd, who was last season’s Game 1 postseason starter.
As a group, though, the pitchers to whom manager Craig Counsell will hand the ball beginning five weeks hence aren’t an obvious strength. The Phillies — the team the Cubs would host in the wild-card round were it to begin today — have a gangbusters trio of starters in Christopher Sanchez, Zack Wheeler and Jesus Luzardo. The NL Central-leading Brewers, who show no signs of surrendering their lead to the Cubs, have overwhelming Cy Young favorite Jacob Misiorowski and the best team ERA in the majors. The Braves and Dodgers can trot out Chris Sale and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, respectively — each better this season than anyone the Cubs have — for a tone-setting Game 1.
The Cubs don’t have a clear No. 1 playoff starter. It calls to mind a football team without a clear No. 1 quarterback late in training camp. If you’re still looking at a competition as training camp wears on, it usually means you don’t have the right answer.
“I would say we don’t have that,” Counsell said last week. “I don’t think many teams do. I think there are some teams that do. We don’t. …
“We’re going to have some decisions at some point with that, but right now I don’t think I would consider anybody that.”
But if the Cubs are going to have a postseason hero who drives them over the top, no one is going to be in a better position to do it than whoever takes the ball in Game 1 of the opening series. Boyd, who has had two straight rough outings on the heels of a stellar nine-start stretch, hopes it’s him.
“I want that,” he told the Sun-Times. “That’s why I’m a starting pitcher. You want the control to dictate a game. That’s what I love about it.”
If the Cubs have any sort of pitching edge approaching the playoffs, it can be found in their abundance of starter-level arms. David Peterson, Shota Imanaga, Edward Cabrera, Ben Brown and others likely will be called upon as piggybacks to starters to work middle innings, a strategy that has potential. But the actual starters still will have to pony up — in the Cubs’ case, against some legit aces.
“I don’t have to have a better season than them, I’ve just got to be better that day,” Boyd said. “When you line up against [an ace], you don’t sit there and go, ‘Man, that guy’s had a better career than me.’ Yeah, their track records speak for themselves — they’ve had great seasons, some of them have had amazing careers thus far — but that’s why you play the games.”
Even Boyd sees the biggest games of the season in realistic terms — it will come down to multiple throwers needed to win any game.
“You sit there and go, ‘Man, I don’t see one nine-inning puzzle. I see multiple nine-inning puzzles solved,’ ” he said. “And that’s what you need when it comes down to it.”
Still, Boyd hungers to be that hero. He has seen Chicago starters without devastating stuff work October magic before.
“You can watch Jon Lester do it [for the Cubs in 2016], can watch Mark Buehrle do it [for the White Sox in 2005], to think about two lefties there, guys that I looked up to,” he said. “You don’t need 98 [mph]. You can pitch. That’s kind of the beauty of this game, that there’s multiple ways to do it. Analytical models might value one thing over another, but you’re still doing it.”
Before the playoff opener a year ago, against the Padres at Wrigley Field, I made Boyd cry. It wasn’t my intention, but this was a guy who’d been through it — traded multiple times, toiling on last-place teams, major injury comebacks including from Tommy John surgery in his 30s — and being asked about overcoming it all to start a Game 1 brought him to tears.
Tears won’t flow again this time, will they?
“They might,” he said.
Boyd still thinks about his late grandfather — a diehard Cubs fan — and how much all this would have meant to him.
“The feeling hasn’t changed,” Boyd said. “I’m getting chills right now just thinking about it. My hairs are standing up.”
He showed his left arm, which will be mighty important soon enough, for proof.
“All this means a ton,” he said. “It means a ton to do it in this uniform, but it means a ton in general because these opportunities don’t come very often.”
Another Game 1 chance might be in the offing. Then again, someone else might seize the opportunity with a strong finish to the regular season. It will be a September decision, for sure, just the reality for a team that has much of what it needs to win the whole thing — but no ace.