The Chicago Cubs return home in a two-games-to-none hole
in the National League Championship Series and with plenty of
questions left unanswered after back-to-back losses to the Los
Angeles Dodgers.
Will their struggling offense find a way to recover? What's wrong
with a bullpen that yielded late runs in both losses, including
surrendering a walk-off, three-run home run Sunday night in
Chicago's 4-1 setback in Game 2 at Dodger Stadium?
With time now running short on his team's World Series title
defense, Cubs manager Joe Maddon realizes that if his team is going
to bounce back, it has to be soon.
Heading into Game 3 tonight at Wrigley Field, Maddon
points back to the NL Division Series against the Washington
Nationals, when many of the same concerns arose before Chicago
found a way to win and advance.
"I obviously wanted to win one out of those two (games in Los
Angeles). We didn't. That's reality," Maddon said Monday. "There is
reality and there is fantasy. People like to tend to deal with
fantasy. It's reality. So we've got to come back here and get
ourselves back together."
In need of a win, the Cubs will turn to Kyle Hendricks, who pitched
four innings in the NLDS-clinching victory last week over the
Nationals. Chicago won both of Hendricks' NLDS starts, but the Cubs
will need to find a way to produce some offense after scoring just
three runs and collecting only seven hits in the two weekend losses
to the Dodgers.
Hendricks is 2-1 with a 3.15 ERA in three career starts against the
Dodgers, whom he will face for the first time this year on Tuesday
night. Despite the Cubs' 2-0 hole in the best-of-seven series,
Hendricks said Monday he doesn't consider Tuesday a must-win.
"Our team doesn't really approach games like that," Hendricks said.
"You hear the way Joe (Maddon) speaks about it. For us, this is
just Game 170, I think it's going to be. So, yeah, we're down 2-0.
Obviously we know we need to get wins at this point. But
approaching it as a must-win is a little extreme. We've just got to
go out there and play our brand of baseball."
The Dodgers head into Tuesday still unbeaten in the postseason and
confident after Justin Turner's ninth-inning, three-run blast
Sunday night. Yu Darvish takes the mound for Los Angeles, having
won his lone playoff start to date this year. On Oct. 9 against the
Arizona Diamondbacks, he allowed one run, two hits and struck out
seven over five innings in a 3-1 victory.
Darvish has allowed just two earned runs and struck out 28 in his
past four outings dating back to the regular season. The
right-hander will make just his second career start against the
Cubs, after allowing two runs in 4 1/3 innings during a loss with
the Texas Rangers in 2016.
The 31-year-old Japan native hopes to continue the mastery that the
Dodgers have had in silencing Chicago's bats in the first two games
of the series. But as much as the Cubs have struggled to hit thus
far, Darvish realizes he has to be careful with a lineup that
possesses plenty of dangerous hitters.
"They've got (a) really good lineup from top to bottom, and they
play as a team so there is nobody in that lineup that I can get
easy on," Darvish said. "So it's going to be a battle, and I just
want to take one pitch at a time, one guy at a time."
