MILWAUKEE — The construct for this particular Cubs team is that every day should feel the same. That’s the image projected by Chicago’s pragmatic, unemotional manager, Craig Counsell, who continues to get lustily booed in his hometown. Within the clubhouse, players often analyze their performance with a sense of detachment more than urgency.
That’s fine over the course of 162 games. But amid the chaos of the postseason, no one really cares about the soundness of your logic in using an opener, pitching to this hitter with first base open or going to that reliever in a high-leverage situation. If it works, it’s a great call. If it doesn’t, it’s a dumb decision.
Every playoff team creates some good vibes, shows an attention to detail and trusts the process on some level. In the end, only the results matter.
Completely outplayed by the Brewers thus far in a National League Division Series, the Cubs are teetering on the brink of elimination after Monday night’s 7-3 loss at American Family Field. The sellout crowd of 42,787 delighted in watching Milwaukee take a commanding 2-0 lead in a best-of-five matchup that has not lived up to the hype.
Instead of waging a knock-down, drag-out series, the Cubs have been embarrassed by the small-market Brewers in a stadium that Chicago fans like to call “Wrigley North.” But when facing baseball’s best team during the regular season — a group refreshed and focused after a first-round bye — that convenience factor is nowhere to be found.
Poaching Counsell when he became a free agent after the 2023 season did not stop the Milwaukee machine. Carrying a substantially higher payroll has not closed the gap in the NL Central. Waiting until next year is a concept that Cubs fans are intimately familiar with by now.
Silence blanketed the visiting clubhouse when the doors opened to the media late Monday night. Shota Imanaga, the Japanese lefty who usually pitches with so much joy and conviction, stood at his locker, searching for answers.
“I ruined the game,” Imanaga said through an interpreter. “There’s a lot of frustration with myself.”
Handed an early lead, Imanaga coughed it up shortly after, exiting after 2 2/3 innings with his Cubs trailing. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
Imanaga looked flustered when Counsell visited the mound without the pitcher’s interpreter, buying time until reliever Daniel Palencia was ready to take over in the third inning. The scouting concerns that followed Imanaga’s years in Nippon Professional Baseball have popped up again at the worst possible time.
Handed a three-run lead before he threw his first pitch, Imanaga gave it right back in the first inning when Andrew Vaughn launched an 83.7 mph sweeper into the left-field seats. William Contreras hammered a 90.7 mph fastball for another home run in the third inning, putting the Brewers ahead and leaving the Cubs exposed.
As a team built on solid pitching and Gold Glove defense, the Cubs have come up short in both those phases of the game and at the most important time of the season.
The offense, meanwhile, simply hasn’t put enough pressure on Milwaukee’s pitchers. Outside of Michael Busch’s leadoff home run in Game 1 and Seiya Suzuki’s three-run homer 16 pitches into Game 2, the Cubs have been held scoreless in 14 of the 16 other innings.
The Brewers beat the Cubs with a traditional ace, Freddy Peralta, in Game 1, and then deployed six different pitchers to shut down Chicago’s offense once Game 2 opener Aaron Ashby exited. In starting Justin Turner over Busch to counter the left-handed Ashby at the start of the game, Counsell referred to the 40-year-old clubhouse leader as “‘The Godfather’ of playoff experience for our guys.”
“It’s just about trusting the process, staying in your routines,” Turner said before Game 2. “When you get into the playoffs, everything seems to be amplified a little bit — media, TV (cameras) everywhere, interviews. Things feel a lot bigger than in the regular season, so it’s finding ways to slow things down.”
The Brewers are just faster, from Jacob Misiorowski’s triple-digit velocity to Jackson Chourio’s bat speed to an overall style of play that emphasizes swing-and-miss stuff and athleticism all over the field. As the NLDS shifts to Wrigleyville, all the Cubs can do is fall back on what got them to this point.
“If you’re emotional about it, that’s not going to help anything,” Jameson Taillon, who’s lined up to start Wednesday’s elimination game, said. “It’s, ‘What can we do to win a game today?’
“For hitters, it’s prepare the right way and know what the pitcher’s going to throw. For us, it’s making sure we’re taking care of our weight room work and our side work, and not getting lost in the emotion of where the series is at. You still have to do your job.”
The Cubs can’t completely reinvent themselves during Tuesday’s off-day workout at Wrigley Field. The goal, All-Star center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said, is to not change everything or try to do anything extra. After going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in Game 2, he stood in front of his locker and insisted the Cubs can “absolutely” come back in this playoff series.
“I’d be a fool if I was here and didn’t think so,” Crow-Armstrong said.
The screens in the clubhouse listed a 12:10 a.m. bus back to Chicago. Right now, the Cubs can only hope that they will come back to Milwaukee for a Game 5.
“You have to take it one game at a time,” Ian Happ said. “You can’t look at it as this daunting three games. You have to take it as win tomorrow. That’s the only thing that we can do as a group, is just win on Wednesday and go on.”
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