How The Cubs Won The NL Wild-Card Game

Chicago and Pittsburgh teams have won more than their share of major pro-sports championships — without much help from the hard-luck Cubs and Pirates. The Donovan Index ranks U.S. cities by their rate of winning titles, taking into account how many opportunities they’ve had. So if a team in a 30-team league wins one World Series in 30 years, it’s average, which is scaled as 1 in the index. Pittsburgh and Chicago both are above 1 in the index, with Pittsburgh ranking eighth of 32 cities with at least three pro-sports teams and Chicago ranking 11th. But the Pirates and Cubs have lagged behind the cities’ other pro teams — especially the Cubs, with their two World Series wins and none since 1908. If they hold on to this lead, they’ll be one step closer to making it three titles — which would still leave them by far the most underperforming of Chicago’s five major pro teams.

Someone in the announcers booth mentioned that the Cubs’ Kris Bryant tries to hit four fly balls every game in the hope that one goes out of the park (by sheer virtue of Bryant’s size and strength). That argument was strangely sabermetric for announcers who have spent much of the night scratching their heads at anything involving analytics. Statheads have long known that a hitter’s rate of home runs per fly ball tends to regress toward the league average, meaning batters can generally expect some baseline number of their flies to leave the yard as long as they’re hitting enough balls deep in the air. The league average rate, though, isn’t 1 in 4 — it’s more like 1 in 10, with Bryant hitting a home run every six fly balls.

The Pirates ended each of the last two innings by grounding into double plays. Turning double plays isn’t the Cubs’ forte — they ranked near the bottom of the majors with just 121 in the regular season, about three every four games. And Arrieta induced just 15 double plays, in part because so few batters reached base against him to create double-play opportunities. But there’s more to infield defense than double plays, and the Cubs were above average defensively at every infield position. Tinkers, Evers and Chance would be proud.