It has been a long time since the Pirates and Cubs have played meaningful baseball in September. The Cubs are not the team the Pirates are chasing right now, and they don’t have much of a shot at winning this year’s NL Central, but this is a big series for the Pirates. Today, in fact, has quite a bit on the line for the Bucs.
The first thing is this: if the Pirates win both ends of this double-header, they more or less have home field advantage in the Wild Card Game sewn up. This is a big deal: PNC Park and Wrigley Field will play much differently for the Pirates come the first week of October, and Gerrit Cole has been dominant at PNC this year. Nothing would be a sure thing, of course, but a six-game lead with 18 to go would make that top Wild Card spot feel awfully safe.
The second thing is this: if the Pirates sweep the Cubs today, they can do no worse than finish the day two games behind the Cardinals. The last time the Pirates were only two games behind the Cardinals, it was April 14th. That’s the day after the home opener.
All of this is to say that while a split would be fine for the Pirates against the Cubs today (the worst a split would do is leave them at three back of the Cardinals), I want to be greedy. Gerrit Cole coming off of his skipped start to get himself in a slightly better place for the playoffs against Jason Hammel is an advantage for the Pirates. JA Happ has been the Pirates’ best pitcher since August 1st and, as I told a couple of Cubs’ blogs in podcasts and Q&As over the last 24 hours, I don’t quite understand it, but I’m rolling with it. He’ll face Jon Lester in the nightcap and while Lester has been fine in his last two starts, he got hit hard a couple of times in August.
The Cardinals have left the door open for the Pirates. It’s time to step through it. Cole and Hammel at 1:35. Happ and Lester at 7:05.
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