Saturday became the unofficial start of the National League wild-card playoff season for the Cubs.
With the Cardinals showing they are way above the Cubs’ class, it has become time to use the wild card as a carrot, even though four teams are ahead of them.
The theory is the wild-card-leading Rockies and Giants can beat up on each other in the West, just as the Marlins and Braves can in the East, and the Cubs can run off a long string of victories that would close the 6 1/2 -game gap that faced them Saturday morning.
“We know that, we have for a while,” manager Lou Piniella said of that theory. “It’s just a question of us winning with the consistency we need to. If we do that, we’ll get ourselves back in the race.”
Maybe Piniella really believes that, maybe he is just being deluded because the Cubs won their second straight game Saturday over the Mets, a beat-up Triple-A team disguised as major-leaguers.
But Saturday’s 11-4 victory — which came courtesy of Jake Fox’s first grand slam and career-high five RBIs — has the Cubs holding out hope.
“If we keep coming out with enthusiasm and energy, who knows what could happen,” said Fox, an original Mr. Enthusiasm.
Fox’s big day on the Fox national telecast made a winner of Ryan Dempster (8-7), who allowed four runs on eight hits in six innings.
He’s a believer too.
“We just have to keep doing what we did [Saturday],” he said. “Good, bad or indifferent, whatever it is at the end, we’ll find out. But we have to … not worry about what we did yesterday or what we will do tomorrow or who’s in front of us or what the standings are.
“If we start paying attention to that kind of stuff, we might as well just make tee times for the 5th of October. … Who knows in the end.”
Saturday’s crowd of 40,857 at Wrigley Field — including soon-to-be owner Tom Ricketts — at least had something to cheer about and something to look forward to with the Mets in town one more day.
“[Ricketts] saw us play the way a lot of people envisioned us to play,” Piniella said.
Of course, no one envisioned Fox winning games for them, except maybe Fox himself. He never has been short of confidence.
“Fox told me before the game, ‘I’ve got your back today, Skip,'”Piniella said. “The first couple of at-bats into it, I was wondering, but he caught up in a hurry.”
After making outs in the second and fourth innings, Fox put the game out of reach for Dempster and the bullpen with a monster home run in the fifth that finished the day for Mets starter Bobby Parnell, making it 8-4.
He was prodded into taking a curtain call.
“I’ve never done that,” Fox said. “[Teammates] kept saying, ‘Get out there, get out there,’ and I said, ‘Where am I supposed to go?’
“They said, ‘Wave your helmet,’ and I did, and it was pretty cool.”
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dvandyck@tribune.com
Up next: Sunday vs. Mets, 1:20 p.m., WGN-Ch. 9
