CINCINNATI – Anyone who still wasn’t sure what Joe Maddon might be capable of doing as the manager of the Cubs after 250 or so games got the full “mad scientist” view on a long, strange Tuesday night in Cincinnati.
By the end of a 7-2, 15-inning victory by the Cubs, two different pitchers had batted, three had played left field, and guys in the Cubs dugout were rooting for a ball to be hit to Strop in left.
“We were hoping, man,” said Maddon, who navigated much of the final three innings of that game with just seven position players eligible. “A fly ball to Stropy would have really been a fitting conclusion.”
The go-ahead run scored in the 15th on Kris Bryant’s single through the left side of a drawn-in infield with one out – his only hit in seven trips to the plate the night after his historic, 16-total-bases performance.
An intentional walk loaded the bases for starting pitcher/pinch-hitter Jason Hammel – the former Rays pitcher who often refers to “the mad scientist that is Joe Maddon” – who grounded sharply for an out just ahead of Javy Baez’s booming grand slam over the center field wall.
“The grand slam was huge just to really build that cushion to permit us to be more comfortable going into that last inning,” Maddon said, “because I had no idea what was going on.”
The wacky machinations all began in the 13th inning after Maddon had exhausted his short bench an inning earlier.
With the score 2-2 and two Reds on base with one out in the bottom of the 13th, Maddon went to his bullpen for pitcher Joel Peralta – and for a left-fielder in Travis Wood, double-switching out left fielder Chris Coghlan.
“It was all hands on deck,” Maddon said. “We were down to almost nothing at the end.”
The last Cubs pitcher to play a different position defensively was Sean Marshall – who was traded for Wood in 2011 – who also played left in a game in 2009 for Lou Piniella.
After Peralta got a double play on a line drive to Ben Zobrist at second, Maddon replaced him in the bottom of the 14th anyway – which meant he could have avoided the risk in the field in the 13th and simply used Wood to pinch-hit in the 14th with the same result.
“I thought about that,” said Maddon, who liked the idea of having the left-handed Wood as the lefty half of a toggle tandem with whatever right-hander he had on the mound.
“To get Travis in the game really created a lot of flexibility,” Maddon said. “And I had a lot of faith in him in the outfield. I didn’t even blanch at that thought. With Travis you just treat him like a position player. I’m that comfortable with him.”
Fast-forward to the bottom of the 14th, when, with the right-left-right middle of the Reds order up, Maddon used right-hander Spencer Patton, then swapped Patton for Wood, then swapped Wood back for Patton.
The game may have turned on that sequence in more ways than one.
“When I went out to do it originally, the infielders were kind of giggling. They kind of liked it,” said Maddon of the Wood-to-left move. “When you get into a game like that that’s really stressful, and everybody’s trying so hard, and everybody wants to win, in a perverse way it lightens the mood a little bit.
“They all kind of dug that.”
After the big 15th-inning rally, Maddon went back to Wood, who pitched a scoreless inning to finish it.
“What can I say?” Maddon said. “It was the Travis Wood show.”
A struggling Cubs bullpen was stellar for most of its 7 2/3 innings, with the exception of a Hector Rondon blown save in the ninth that started with a one-out hit batter.
Until then Jon Lester looked like he was cruising to a 10th win, pitching seven scoreless innings before allowing a solo homer in the eighth.
“Jon was spectacular,” Maddon said.
With one on and two out in the eighth, Maddon called on Rondon to attempt a save of at least four outs for the fourth time in six outings – indicating the trust level he has for others in the bullpen these days.
But after the blown save, Justin Grimm, Carl Edwards Jr., Cahill, Peralta, Patton and Wood combined for six scoreless innings, allowing just three hits without a walk and striking out eight.
“What a team effort!” Grimm shouted in the clubhouse when he spotted the media.
