(All games on TBS). And he also suspects if the Cubs win the World Series the celebration will extend to the great beyond.
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Cubs: CF Dexter Fowler (.250, 17 HRs, 46 RBIs), LF Kyle Schwarber (.246, 16, 43), 3B Kris Bryant (.275, 26, 99), 1B Anthony Rizzo (.278, 31, 101), 2B Starlin Castro (.265, 11, 69), RF Jorge Soler (.262, 10, 47), C Miguel Montero (.248, 15, 53) or David Ross (.176, 1, 9), SS Javier Baez (.289, 1, 4). Chicago has the young nucleus of position players (albeit with Cy Young candidate Jake Arrieta and Lester, too). Trevor Cahill picked up the win and Rondon worked the ninth for the save. “I’ll be very cautious with it”, Schwarber said.
Chicago rebuilt around rookie sluggers, while New York pinned its plan on lively arms. At least that’s the storyline. “I think we’re excited to give them another run and have it be in this important of a series”. But the last meeting was July 2, weeks before the Mets overhauled their struggling offense.
Since then, the Amazin’s have added Yoenis Cespedes, Juan Uribe, Kelly Johnson, Tyler Clippard and Addison Reed via trade and promoted Michael Conforto from Double-A Binghamton. He is 2-0 with a 2.50 ERA in 3 career starts against the Mets. For deGrom, being both lucky and good went hand in hand. He exited after giving up a leadoff walk to Jhonny Peralta in the fourth. Baez took Russell’s spot. Cuddyer was benched after struggling in the series opener.
“The Mets showed their muscle the latter part of the year like we did”, Cubs manager Joe Maddon said.
It started on the first day, when Houston outfielder Colby Rasmus flipped aside his bat after a homer at Yankee Stadium in the AL wild-card game.
Maddon said they haven’t made a decision on Russell’s replacement for the NLCS roster against the Los Angeles Dodgers or New York Mets, which must be submitted by Saturday morning. One would be that they’ll be without key infielders in Ruben Tejada for the Mets and Addison Russell for the Cubs.
Oh, this is better still than the first one.
UNLV at Fresno State (7:30 p.m., ESPN2 (31)): Despite the Rebels falling to 2-4 after Saturday’s 33-27 overtime loss to San Jose State, ESPN still projects UNLV to play South Alabama in the NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl on December. 29 in Tucson.
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Mets: After six straight losing seasons, the Mets (90-72) finally turned it around. The last third of this game was, weirdly enough, anticlimactic compared to the first two-thirds, as if the baseball gods squeezed everything they could into the first 36 outs and then looked around befuddled when the tank ran dry. “We’ll see how it goes”. But it sounds as if he wants to avoid an abrupt ending to what is turning into a magic Mets playoff run. But the Mets won twice at Dodger Stadium to take the series in five games. The Blue Jays will see even higher velocities in Game 2 when they face Yordano Ventura, who led all qualified major league pitchers with an average fastball velocity of 96.3 miles per hour, according to Fangraphs. But the 1989 movie did predict the Cubbies would win the 2015 World Series, and Chicago is eight wins from pulling off the improbable feat. Because he’s the one they saw, he’s the one that got targeted. Now they have a few October experience to draw on, and poise under pressure remains a major theme for all the players in their early-to-mid-20s. When he was hired to manage the Angels before the 1997 season, Collins chose Maddon to be his bench coach. The 30-year-old will be a free agent after the postseason following a season in which he hit.
