Then Ramirez tapped another infield single. And the game got weirder and weirder, to the point of absurdity.Īfter retiring the first two hitters in the bottom of the eighth, Lester and the Cubs owned a three-run lead and stood just four outs away from erasing the year 1908 from the conversation. The ageless Ross hammered a 406-foot blast to dead center in the sixth, stretching Chicago's lead to 6-3, and making what might have been 20,000 Cubs fans in the stands lose their damn minds.
Jon Lester navigated some tough innings in relief, making Indians hitters suffer the wrath of his cutter and curveball. Fowler and Kyle Schwarber combined for six hits. But he also dealt a nasty changeup when he had to, including this first-inning whiff of Kipnis. Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks struggled at times with command, and got bailed out by weak swings on numerous hittable pitches. Multiple Cubs heroes chipped in as the game wore on. Watching Jason Kipnis scamper all the way around from second as the ball scooted away from David Ross, you sensed that the Indians weren't going to go down without a fight. When Andrew Miller finally showed he was mortal by ceding a run on two hits and a walk in the top of the fifth, the Indians came storming back with two in the bottom of the fifth, both runs scoring on a wild pitch. When Fowler homered, Carlos Santana came right back with a run-scoring single in the third to tie it. If anything, the Indians coming this close to winning it all while operating at so far below full strength was an enormous feat, a tribute to the skill and perseverance of those able-bodied enough to play, and to manager Terry Francona for coaxing everything he could out of that depleted roster. Going up against a team with dangerous threats from one almost all the way down to 25, when you're missing All-Star Michael Brantley and the beguiling right-hander Carrasco, while having Salazar and catcher Yan Gomes at far less than 100 percent, was simply asking too much. Trying to coax three dominant starts out of Kluber, who would have to battle fatigue and the threat of the Cubs finally mastering him on their third try, was asking a lot. Trying to win a series with Trevor Bauer and Josh Tomlin starting a combined four times against a loaded offense was asking a lot. Losing Carlos Carrasco until next spring with a hand injury, and Danny Salazar for seven weeks with a forearm injury, forced the Indians' rotation into survival mode. If a one-run nail-biter to end a seven-game series could ever do this, this one offered a stark reminder that attrition can be a killer. Instead, that collection of kids, bolstered by a couple of big blows by some unlikely veteran heroes, knocked around one of the American League's Cy Young front-runners, then kept mashing when Cleveland's vaunted bullpen took over. The Cubs set a new postseason record by starting six players age 24 or younger in Game 2, and you wondered if that inexperience might trump the team's copious talent.
8th inning of the 2016 world series game 7 full game free#
The National League's top offense during the regular season had struggled badly early in the series, with free swingers like Baez helicoptering themselves into the turf and even elite sluggers like Kris Bryant flailing.
This, along with their nine-run outburst in Game 6, is what we had been expecting the Cubs offense to do.