Casilla upset he wasn’t called upon during ninth inning debacle

Santiago Casilla was in tears at his locker on Tuesday night after the San Francisco Giants were eliminated by the Chicago Cubs in the NLDS. Perceptions take time to chance and numerous reporters heading to Chicago to cover Lester’s start on Saturday against the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. “But when the Red Sox did win the World Series twice in a row, fans didn’t really attribute it to the players’ beards or Ted Williams’s ghost”. Great job, what Matt did for us. It’s off to a nice start.

Now, San Francisco will nearly certainly go forward with new faces – Derek Law, Steven Okert, Will Smith.

With Bumgarner’s remarkable postseason scoreless streak at 24 innings, Arrieta drove a 1-2 pitch into the left-field bleachers in the second inning – and, as a bonus, a man in a blue Cubs cap caught it and jumped for joy at his good fortune.

Meanwhile, Moore was just as effective as Giants Game 1 starter Johnny Cueto, whom the Cubs would have faced in a deciding Game 5. “I’ll tell you in the ninth”, he said, smiling. “We’ve got to do everything we can to make sure we’re clear on who is finishing our games”. “It can’t hurt us”. Four wins from their first pennant in 71 years, the Cubs await the Dodgers-Nationals victor in the NLCS beginning Saturday at Wrigley Field.

Game 2: Dodgers/Nationals at Cubs, Sunday, Oct. 16, 7:08 p.m.

“No preference”, Maddon said, and he actually might have meant it.

“In every case that a closer didn’t come to the Giants, they went elsewhere for probably a lot more than we could have been involved in”. There are people with intimate knowledge of the Nationals who believe what Maddon did that weekend – walking Harper 13 times in 19 plate appearances – impacted Harper for the rest of the year.

The NLDS reinforced Maddon’s pre-series theme of rebounding from adversity.

Cubs closer Aroldis Chapman struck out the side in the ninth inning, officially breaking the even-year magic and giving fans a sense of relief, for now. Pinch hitter Willson Contreras singles to center field and knots the game at 5-5. “We’re going to have some growing pains but they’ll be better because of what happened”. And there will be more adversity. “It’s hard in the middle of a season to enjoy things as much as you like because it’s one start and four days later you have another (start)”.

“It kind of gives you an empty stomach to go out like this”. The crowd chanted Kershaw’s name as he and Bryce Harper battled through eight pitches before Harper drew a walk. “To go from a precarious position to champagne, it doesn’t usually happen that quickly”. “Down three in the ninth inning, it’s a tough hole to dig out of”. It didn’t matter. The Cubs rallied for the 6-5 win on Tuesday behind ground balls, errors and fluky hits, capped off by the go-ahead RBI from series hero Javier Baez. Brandon Crawford hit a leadoff double on an 0-2 curveball. “He’s been through a lot in his career but he came in and shut them down”. “So, we’re not going to let – if we make a mistake, we’re not going to blame it on a curse or anything else like that”.

Of course, Law threw two innings in Monday’s Game 3 of the series, and maybe Bochy’s assumption was that a rested Lopez would be a better bet against Rizzo than a well-worked Law. He said the Giants “threw everything (we had) at them and that was the plan”. “We have one mission, one goal in mind”. And when the Cubs visited Washington, they were something of a more typical team, still comfortably in first place but having endured a stretch in which they lost six of eight, typical baseball stuff. “And we’ll keep visualizing it and enjoying it”.