I was going to write about Jason Heyward. I was going to write about his home run Saturday night, and all the other big hits, and all the nobility he’s exhibited through the ups and (mostly) downs of his big contract.
Then Alec Mills threw a no-hitter.
It was not the sort of performance normally described as “dominant.” Mills only struck out five batters. He walked three. The average exit velocity of balls in play was higher than it’s been in half his other starts.
But Mills threw a no-hitter, and he hasn’t allowed a run in his last two starts, and the Cubs are four games up in the division with somewhere between twelve (by the Cubs) and eighteen (by the Cardinals) games left to be played.
If you were to use FIP to craft a playoff rotation, Mills would be your third or fourth starter, depending on whether you were to include Adbert Alzolay. Mills’s isn’t a great FIP. It’s the fifth-worst among qualified starters (though it’s worth remembering that to be a qualified starter you need to perform well-enough to keep getting starts). You could do worse, though, than a guy who just threw a no-hitter going out there in the middle or the end of the NLDS or NLCS, if the Cubs make it that far.
Will the Cubs make it that far? Some of that may depend on Mills’s performance in the Wild Card Series. Some will depend on whether the bats come out more like they did for the last ten innings of the weekend than they did for the first seventeen. A lot will depend on chance, specifically when it comes to which of the what-seems-to-be eight potential Wild Card Series opponents the Cubs draw. Face Jacob deGrom in Game 1? Good luck. Face the Rockies’ 27th-in-the-majors-by-wRC+ offense? That might go a bit better.
Whomever the Cubs face, it’s looking like it’ll be Mills, Jon Lester (who turned in his own very-relieving great start on Friday), or Alzolay if there’s a rubber match, barring a strong return from Tyler Chatwood, a strong return from José Quintana, or the decision to go by committee—though then we’re back to involving Mills. Altogether, it’s looking like Mills will be a factor in October. Long or short, it’s been a strange trip.
These next two nights, the Cubs catch a skidding Cleveland team that’s lost six straight, a stretch that began against the Royals and extended through a buzzsaw of a weekend in Minnesota. Cleveland has the best pitching staff in baseball by performance, led by Shane Bieber, the best pitcher in baseball so far this year. Carlos Carrasco and Aaron Civale—the two starters the Cubs will face—each have an ERA or FIP better than that of Kyle Hendricks. It’s possible one of the two wouldn’t be included in a playoff rotation. The results haven’t been bad—before the skid, Cleveland’s 26-15 record was among the best in baseball—but the skid happened, and it happened in part because an offense that’s struggled all year to score runs continued to come up short.
Only three Cleveland batters have a wRC+ above 100, which is average. One of those, Francisco Lindor, is posting the worst wRC+ of his career at 106. The lineup’s given 30% of its plate appearances to negative-fWAR players. It’s an offense that should be a lot better—FanGraphs’s Depth Charts projection has it in the top half in position player WAR—but so far, it’s been terrible.
So, Cubs fans should count their blessings this week. Underwhelming as the North Side offense has been, it’s nothing like that of its 2016 World Series opponent. And if all works out for the home team, things will stay that way for at least these next two nights, with the Cubs aiming to either split the series and hold the line against the Cardinals, or take both games and move a step closer to clinching.
We’re eighty percent of the way through the season. Playoff baseball is quickly approaching.
