In the bottom of the eighth inning Sunday, after Dusty Baker had used five pitchers, the indomitable A.J. Burnett was still confounding hitters with 94-m.p.h. fastballs and his signature spiked curveball.
That these hitters were Mike DiFelice, Calvin Murray and Neifi Perez says all you need to know about how the Cubs wasted the most gorgeous Sunday of the 2004 season.
“Bad day,” Baker said after an 11-1 loss that could have inspired many other adjectives and an expletive or two.
That the home team fired blanks wasn’t really that surprising considering the pitching matchup. It was Burnett, who threw a no-hitter when he was 24 and now has recovered from elbow-ligament replacement surgery to win five of his last six starts, allowing only 24 hits in 42 innings, vs. Glendon Rusch, the No. 6 man in the Cubs’ five-man rotation.
Rusch has been one of the few pleasant surprises on the North Side. He blanked the White Sox for eight innings and beat St. Louis way back when that meant something. But Rusch vs. Burnett in a game the defending world champs almost had to win was a mismatch.
“I think he threw the ball really well,” said Rusch, who was knocked out in the fourth inning. “He located his fastball. His breaking ball is basically unhittable when he gets it over the plate. Going up against a guy like that, you have to keep the runs to a minimum, and we didn’t do that.”
Needing a win to split the four-game series and avoid falling 3 1/2 back in the five-team wild-card race (sorry, it’s too late for Philadelphia), the Marlins slapped the ball around Wrigley Field and ran the bases with abandon.
They even found some comic relief when left fielder Miguel Cabrera did a pretty good imitation of Moises Alou on the Steve Bartman play when a foul ball went into the seats near the Cubs’ bullpen.
It doesn’t look like the defending champs are ready to be replaced atop the baseball world.
“Hungry is what we are,” owner Jeffrey Loria said in a cramped, happy clubhouse. “We are still hungry.”
This time, it’s the Marlins who head toward October with the 2004 version of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. That would be Burnett and 17-game winner Carl Pavano, who shut out the Cubs in the first game of Friday’s doubleheader.
They have become the nastiest 1-2 combination this side of Boston’s Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez, with 2003 heroes Josh Beckett and Dontrelle Willis also capable of dominating on any given day. The nine-game winning streak that got Florida back into the playoff picture was not a good thing for the Cubs, San Francisco and San Diego, who had separated themselves from the Marlins and Houston.
“What you saw today was what we’ve been seeing the last four or five times out,” manager/sage Jack McKeon said of Burnett. “You look at our young pitchers … they might not get the notoriety of some other young pitchers, especially in this town, but I think you’ll all agree they hold their own.”
That was certainly the case in the National League Championship Series a year ago, when the Cubs had Prior and Wood fully rested for Games 6 and 7 and still couldn’t finish off the Fish.
History could repeat itself in 2004, with the Cubs enjoying the advance billing but the Marlins knocking them off their pile of press clippings.
San Francisco moved a game ahead of the Cubs in the wild-card race Sunday. San Diego and Houston also will have a say. But it’s usually pitching that wins, which means the Cubs and Florida are the teams holding trump cards.
Barring more meltdowns like they recently experienced against Montreal’s Scott Downs, the Cubs remain better positioned for the stretch run than any of the wild-card contenders. In large part, this is because they won’t face many pitchers like Pavano and Burnett, though they will probably see Pavano again in the Sept. 20 doubleheader in Miami.
Fourteen of their next 19 games are against Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, whose starting rotations rank 10th and 15th, respectively, in the NL in earned-run average. The other games are the two in Florida, three against the New York Mets at Shea Stadium and three against Atlanta, which will be lining up its starters for the playoffs.
Among the probable pitching matchups in the next two weeks:
Pittsburgh’s Frank Brooks, who spent most of this season as a Triple-A reliever, vs. Greg Maddux.
Cincinnati rookie Luke Hudson against Wood.
Cincinnati’s Aaron Harang against Carlos Zambrano.
Cincinnati’s Paul Wilson against Maddux.
Brooks or Pittsburgh rookie John VanBenschoten against Wood.
Pittsburgh’s Josh Fogg against Zambrano.
Whom do you like in those games?
And if Matt Clement is fairly healthy, what about Clement vs. Fogg, Cincinnati’s Juan Acevedo and the Mets’ Jae Weong Seo?
Only three of the Cubs’ next 13 games figure to be against veteran starters with earned-run averages below 4.80–two games against Pirates lefty Oliver Perez, who faces Prior on Wednesday, and the one against Pavano.
There’s a playoff spot there to grab, no matter how shaky the Cubs looked Sunday. If they hit like they should against Brooks and Fogg, the manhandling they got from Burnett will seem like a distant memory, not a fresh nightmare.
