Javier Baez’s basket shot brings Cubs to victory

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A long day of postseason baseball started deep in the heart of Texas and finished on the North Side of Chicago with an intriguing pitching duel to start off the Division Series between the Giants and the Cubs. While Thursday’s action was marked by the AL teams attempting to mash their way into the Championship Series, Johnny Cueto and Jon Lester decided that they were going to try to make every batter they faced look silly, and both of them almost made good on their word.

For eight innings, the Giants and Cubs were in a scoreless deadlock. There were only 8 hits given up between the two teams — five by Lester, three by Cueto. Additionally, 15 strikeouts were thrown in those scoreless innings — ten from Cueto, and five from Lester. To top it all off, both men avoided giving up a walk. That meant that on this particular night, getting on base was almost a minor miracle. That also meant that this was going to come down to which dominant starting pitcher would eventually blink.

In the end, it was Cueto who blinked first, and it came in the bottom of the eighth inning. With the crowd at Wrigley Field on edge, Javier Baez came up to face Cueto. It didn’t matter that Baez went into this game 0-6 for his career against Cueto, and his relatively average .423 slugging percentage and also-average .150 ISO didn’t matter either — what mattered is that Baez managed to get hold of a 92-mph four-seamer and sent it flying into the basket in left field. It threw the fans in the old stadium into a state of delirium, and gave the Cubs a crucial victory in Game One to perfectly cap the four-game marathon of playoff baseball on Friday.

• Albert Almora Jr. told Ken Rosenthal that he thought Baez’s dinger was "going to land on the moon." Baez definitely flipped the bat like he thought the same thing.


• Famous Cubs fan Bill Murray was at the game last night, and he was in a Jimmy John’s hat for some reason.


• Cueto and Lester weren’t the only pitchers who pitched gems on Friday — Corey Kluber completely mystified the Red Sox as Cleveland went up 2-0.


• As a matter of fact, both Divisional Series in the AL are 2-0, as the Blue Jays will be heading back North a win away from the ALCS.


• Somehow, a pitching matchup between Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw resulted in a bullpen pitcher’s duel and it was one that the Dodgers prevailed in.


• Speaking of the bullpen, Kenley Jansen accomplished a rare feat — he had an at-bat and a save in the same postseason game.


• Puig will always be your friend, even when he’s stealing fly balls from his friends.


• Longtime Braves pitching coach Roger McDowell won’t be returning for the 2017 season with Atlanta.


• The crew at Pinstripe Alley seems to have noticed that the Yankees’ pitching staff has a fatal flaw.