NLDS Game 3 Recap: How the Cubs Outlasted the Brewers in a 4–3 Gut-Check

Heart rates spiked, voices cracked, and a season kept breathing. We’re fresh off a 4–3 survival win over Milwaukee—one of those playoff nights where every pitch feels like a verdict—and we’re breaking down what actually swung it: a first-inning rulebook mess, a statement swing from Michael Bush into a stiff wind, and a two-out line drive from Pete Crow-Armstrong that flipped Quinn Priester’s script and forced the Brewers to their pen early.

We get into the granular stuff a box score hides. Jamison Taillon didn’t dazzle; he steadied the game after the sun and shadows conspired against an easy out. The bullpen then took on layers of leverage: Andrew Kittredge wore two loud mistakes but profiles as the kind of pro who bounces back within 24 hours; Caleb Thielbar executed with real poise against Bryce Turang and William Contreras, expanding late and trusting soft contact; Brad Keller flirted with disaster, then found his fastball and locked the door in the ninth. This is the October formula: sequence, shape, and mindset. When to nibble, when to challenge, and how to make a lineup earn every 90 feet.

We also talk lineup truths. Nico Horner’s at-bats remain a clinic in approach and barrel control. Ian Happ’s night will draw heat, but two walks in a game screaming at hitters to expand matters for Game 4. Kyle Tucker’s zone control is still a weapon, even on a compromised leg. Carson Kelly’s bat might not shine, yet his game-calling against a patient, contact-savvy Brewers core is quietly central. And yes, Matt Shaw is searching in his first postseason, but the glove is buying time for the swing that can still change a series.

With an off day looming after Game 4, the bullpen is fully available and battle-tested. Four runs at Wrigley should win when the pen throws strikes and the defense finishes plays. That’s the plan: one clean turn from the starter, aggressive matchups, and pressure on Milwaukee to string together perfect swings under noise. If this felt like torture, it also felt like truth—a team’s spine showing up when it has to.

If this breakdown hit the spot, follow, rate, and share the show. Drop a review on Apple or Spotify and tell us: what’s your move for Game 4’s lineup and pen order? Your take might make the next episode.

Thanks for tuning in!

- Carl & Mahoney

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Game 3 Shock
• 1:45 Sponsor Shout and Community Gratitude
• 5:15 Why Game 3 Felt Like Torture
• 7:20 First-Inning Chaos: Shadows And Rules
• 12:10 Cubs’ Immediate Answer: The Four-Run Surge
• 16:20 Quinn Priester’s Nerves And The Plan
• 19:40 PCA’s Moment And Bush’s Tone-Setter
• 24:10 Rotation Reality And Living With Imperfection
• 27:30 Bullpen Carousel: Roles And Resets
• 33:00 Tielbar’s Poise, Keller’s Edge, And Leverage
• 38:10 Lineup Debates: Hap, Kelly, And Shaw
• 43:00 Confidence For Game 4 And The Road Ahead

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

Good evening, Chicago Cubs fans, and welcome back to the Monday Morning Cub Show. It is Wednesday, October 8th. I am Carl, and the Chicago Cubs just beat the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 to live another day of the 2025 season. Welcome back to the Monday Morning Cub Show. This is just a quick solo recap of Game 3. I have a couple notes to go through and not to beat this drum too hard as we have throughout the postseason. I am I am struggling with the COVID. So if you could hear it in my voice, stay with me. A lot of people lost their voice today just yelling at the TV. I think that's a perfectly fine place to start when we're talking about game three here. That was the most uncomfortable experience of my life. That was the hardest game I've ever had to watch. Why was that harder than game seven? Why was that harder than any baseball game I've ever experienced in my entire life? I mean, that is. Pick any medical procedure without any type of pain relief. Pick the worst thing that could possibly that is torture. Emotionally, psychologically, physically. I believe my cortisol is spiked. You know, there's a lot of things I want to get to with game three. I do need to get some rest tonight for the game four preview, which I'm going to record first thing in the morning, I promise. It would be negligent for me to sit here and talk a lot about what I think Matt Boyd's going to do or what's available to council. I need to go through, watch obviously post-game stuff. I got to go through some of the charts, the analysis, and get the shit right in my head. So I'm just being upfront and honest with you guys. I'm like not in any position at all right now to speculate about game four. If somebody even says the words game five around me, I'm going to fucking kill you. Which is a joke, obviously. Uh, but just more trying to draw attention to the fact that we're just kind of in game three right now, game three mode, heart rate's elevated, super exciting game, very frustrating game, a little confusing game, uh, you know, some stuff to be really proud about, but also just some stuff we should talk about. It's playoffs. Like we thought the season was a lot of people thought the season could be coming to an end. Now, obviously, if you follow the show, you follow pregame, post-game videos online. We had a lot of confidence going in today. And the Cubs delivered, but um they did so under like the most razor-thin margins. Like when I say it's just unbelievably uncomfortable. Am I alone when I say I don't know if I can do this again tomorrow? Like, obviously, we can't. We're just watching baseball. We're just baseball fans. It's not that big of a deal, but holy Toledo. Holy Toledo! Which reminds me. Holy Toledo to Thursday Vacaro. I mean, I know I do this every show because that's the partner of the Monday morning cub show, but I just have to take a step back. I cannot tell you how happy I am that we partnered with this Mexican-style soda with the signature spicy finish that you can get on Amazon delivered to your front door with three different flavors that are absolutely delicious as a standalone non-alcoholic or a mixer. And I'm not reading copy, I'm just shooting from the hip. I can't tell you how lucky I am that they've partnered with us down the stretch so that we can continue to put the content out there. And I can't thank you guys enough for reviewing the show, throwing the five stars, building it up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Every time I look, it's bigger. Every time I look, it's bigger. And the call to actions, I just appreciate it so much because honestly, nobody wants to sit here and be doing call. And here's a favor you guys can do me, and here's another favor you guys can do me. You know, what I'd rather do is pour my heart into a project and then turn around to you guys and say, hey, if if if it's important, you know, if you guys care, I want to show, I want to show you guys how much it means to me. I want you guys to know when I say I absolutely love the Cubs, I love the Monday morning cub show, I love chopping it up. You guys know that. That's not just me bullshitting, right? So then when I come in and I say, hey, Thirsty Vacero is a partner, loves it. They want to be a part of it, they want to be along for the postseason ride, you know? They want to be connected with the community. So we are. We're in Yaksis, we're in Sluggers. You can go into either of those bars before game four playoff game. You can say, Hey, like a Vacero bomb, which is just so freaking awesome to be a part of this on the ground floor of what I think is gonna be a monster, monster product. Like, I think you're gonna be walking into Walmart one day and you're gonna see the Thirsty Vaquero display right when you walk in. And I think it's gonna be mostly sold out, picked over, because it's that good and delicious and refreshing, signature spicy finish, all bite, no rattle. And as much as I'm gonna sit here and just ramble on and on about game three, I'd be stupid and remiss not to take a step back and say thank you to the guys from Thirsty Vacero and encourage you guys to check them out on Amazon. The links are below, obviously on Twitter, always posting the links. Can't can't miss the links, but when you see them, click them. And if you're interested, obviously just supporting everything. It's like when people say you support the shit, everything's in support. It's all in support of the Chicago Cubs community that we're building here. These are the Thirsty Vaccaro guys. So just want to say thank you very much to them. I'm having a delicious Limon Ladron, non-alcoholic, and absolutely delicious, and absolutely a beverage that's gonna put a smile on your face. Just like the game of baseball. All right? Just like the game of baseball, which reminds me of something I really need to get off my chest. When people complain about baseball and say it's a boring sport, like those four hours I just lived through, I I don't even know. I felt I felt like I was in a fucking cockfighting ring in Guatemala. Where the where did I just get transported from? My adrenaline, the way this sport delivers, it's and I don't run. We might be kidding. But if you ask runners, they say there's a runner's hive. If you do it long enough, like some endorphins kick in, and I think that might be the best example for baseball. That's the best analogy. Who gives a shit in June, right? July, you're staying up late. You give a f all that matters, right? This is where it's all kicking in right now. Just four hours of just a complete adrenaline dump in my body from following 162, obviously, just spending time around the community of maniacs and just being so invested in this 2025 season. I wasn't ready to let go today. I didn't want the season to be over. I want to do a lineup preview tomorrow. I want to see how Matt Boyd stacks up against the Brewers. I want to challenge that fucking pitching staff again. I want to continue to work on my F-word usage. There's a lot of things I want, you know? And most notably is I'm not ready to say goodbye to baseball right now. I'm not ready to say goodbye to the 2025 Cubs and just the way it fits into our life. And it's been an incredibly special season. And even if it's just for one more day, and I don't think it is, this game three is so special. This game three means so much to me. Because I'm telling you guys, when you back this team into a corner, they come out and they punch. So I hope everybody's feeling good. I mean, obviously a lot of people are gonna have a hard time getting sleep tonight. But here's what really stands out to me in game three, and I do this all the time off the top. I don't I don't know why I'm gonna do it again, but we shouldn't be here for longer than 30, 35 minutes. Like if we're if we're here for 45 minutes, just turn it off. You know, if this goes an hour, you just put me to sleep. There's no reason for that. I'm gonna come back tomorrow morning and be very prepared with a thorough here's what we're looking for at game four. But right now, here's just the big stuff from game three. If we want to debate about it, you know, you want to text your dad about it, or you're just in that group chat, or you just want to feel it for yourself. You know, we got to Quinn Priester super early today. That was a challenge. Quinn Priester's a good pitcher, right? And if we want to go to the top of the first inning, James and Tan gets fucked. I mean, congratulations, Christian Yelich. He leads off the game with a double, which, you know, millimeters on the barrel is a foul ball, which is easy to say just about every pitch. But in inches in the field, it's a foul ball. You know, these ground ball doubles. Chirio had one the other day. They're double. That's he's a good hitter. You know, he's trying to hit the ball hard. He hits the ball hard down the right field line, gets in a scoring position. We could have gotten out of that if, you know, these are shitty shadows. What do you want me to say? Michael Bush is a professional athlete, Nico Horner's a professional athlete. That infield fly, we're going to talk about that for a second. Because the biggest culprit here is Dansby Swanson running in on that ball like a lunatic instead of going to second base for an easy force out. You never see Dansby lose track of that. Like, that was crazy. Dansby Swanson wasn't in a position in second base to take the ball from Carson Kelly and get a second out in the top of the first. Now, I don't want to complain about Dansby Swanson because that's my maybe like the first mental error I've witnessed him make in a Cubs uniform. Throwing errors happen. He'll throw it away, or like, you know, fielding errors, maybe not making a spectacular play that you would want him to make. Like there's times you can physically, but the mental side, that was crazy to me that Dansby Swanson wasn't at second base. Now, as I'm saying this, you know, I could be subject to some, you know, there could have been something I didn't know about. Right? I'll I'll go back and see what Dansby has to say in post-game. But as we stand here now, game three recap, just looking at that top first inning, where was Dansby Swanson? Now the second question is why isn't that an infield fly? And for the life of me, I've never seen that played out like that. And a pop-up in the infield where the fielders are camped under the ball but can't see it. And because they can't see it, then that allows the umpire to like they have judgment as to whether or not the players can or can't see the ball. And then the reason is like they're not they're not actually making a reasonable effort to make the play because he can't even see the ball in the first place. So then that's an interpretation for the umpire. I mean, raise your hand if you learned that today. I did. I mean, I who knew that? Forever I had always thought about the fact that if you're camped, just as the mere camp under the ball. Because what the infield fly protects is like the manipulation into a double play. So just merely being underneath the ball, the umpire should be then inclined to say, infield fly, infield fly. That's what I've always thought. And the only gray area I've ever seen infield fly come into play is with second baseman going out behind first baseman to catch a pop-up down the right field line. Because in in left field play, like they they usually don't call that an infield fly. If the ball's going out towards the left field line, I don't know why that is. But usually the only like vague opaque area, opaque area you can have infield fly around, in my experience, is like one of those Texas League are punching duty, the second baseman's running out into the outfield. I've never seen that before. That interpretation was extremely frustrating. And even so, Taeon gets out with one run in the first inning. You want to talk about getting, I mean, getting stuffed. You want to talk about a bad break, bad, bad couple sets of things going down, uh chuck double down the right field line to start the game. Into, I mean, if Bush can't see it, then you'd hope Nico, one of those two got neither of them could see the ball. You know, Bush, very good first baseman, Nico Horner, elite second baseman. So obviously that thing's just propped up in the sun. And then people are bitching at Fox or bitching at MLB or whoever's in charge of the scheduling. Why are we playing 4 p.m. games at Wrigley? You know, that's just a really shitty break that happened to us in the top of the first. That happened today. And you know what the 2025 Cubs did? I gotta stop doing this. I sound like it's when they talk about Scotty Scheffler on TV. World number one, Scotty Scheffler. Anywhere, anytime they bring up Scotty Sheffler, world number one. The number one in the world, Scotty Scheffler. I gotta stop calling him the 2025 Cubs. It's just the Cubs. I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm so jacked up from this game. I my heart is outside of my chest in my hands, and it is beating so freaking loud. Can you guys hear that? What is that? Lubdub? I can't do that. I don't have a sound effect guy on the fucking payroll. All right, cut me. So I don't have a thumbnail guy. We don't even do this on. But this is audio only, baby, game three recap, and we are so fired up from the fact that Jamison kind of got some tough breaks first inning. If you want to blame it on the umpire, if you want to blame it on the defense, if you want to blame it on just like this is the way it is, shadows. You know, there's some people you want to blame, go ahead and blame them. You know, in the meantime, he didn't blame anybody, he just kept trying to make pitches. Now, he wasn't perfect tonight, and that's okay because you don't have to be perfect. What you can't do is get your absolute shit rocked in the first inning like we have in the first two games of the series. So I think this was a nice little taste for us Cubs fans that game one, we get the lead off Bush Homer, and then Matt Boyd can't make it out of the first inning. And then game two, it's like, should we get the Sea Suzuki? We're up big, they come back three spot. So it was nice in this case to have it flipped where the Brewers were like, we got momentum, these guys suck, these guys are beating themselves, and then we come out with a four-spot in the top, or I mean in the bottom, and we knock Quinn Priester out of the game. That's incredible stuff. Because Quinn Priester is going out there with the lead, looking upon the zone. Now he's nervous, and this is why I had said repeatedly about Quinn Priester when we talk about when Quinn Priester pitches, etc., this is a kid from Kerry Grove who's the first uh first round draft pick out of Cary Grove High School, which is a northern suburb of Chicago, which I will guarantee you 95% of the kids in his high school graduating class are diehard Cubs fans. I will guarantee you in the 2016 playoffs, he and his buddies were jumping up and down in somebody's basement cheering for the Cubs. And I will hopefully guarantee you guys that that same crop of close friends from Carrie Grover, whatever his background is, hopefully he has the cousins or the brothers or the fucking buddies in his life from back home that are like, don't you dare beat the Cubs today. Even if they're just joking, fucking around with them, giving them a hard time. It's not that, hey, you're nervous, you're pitching at home. There could be just, I know this is crazy, this is just a crazy little thing, but I would just like to imagine in the back of my head that like one of his buddies, maybe a cousin, a second cousin, somebody who has his number but shouldn't have his number, you know, or he hasn't he doesn't talk to very frequently, doesn't come home to see, sends him a touch. Don't you dare beat our cubbies today. Don't don't you forget what we were doing in 2016, don't hurt me like that. That's just funny to think about a local kid because he looked so unbelievably uncomfortable today. Or you could make the argument that the Cubs looked unbelievably prepared. And one of the metrics we had looked at, Quinn Priester had only made two starts against the Cubs this year, but he had walked seven hitters, I believe, in ten innings. And even though I believe we lost both those games, I believe so. But my takeaway from that was we see this guy well. I mean, if we're taking seven walks and ten innings against this guy, I mean, we obviously understand what he's trying to do to us. And the fact that we just erupt in the bottom of the first for four runs, significant. And there's a obviously, how much do you want to isolate? You say Pete Cole Armstrong, you're the best for getting that basis loaded single. You know, Pete Cole Armstrong stepped up in a huge moment today. Some of his swings are just downright terrible. And the measure I have in my head right now is how much do I want to focus on how bad he looks sometimes? Because the good today was enough. We'll get to that stuff for the game four preview tomorrow. We'll just stay within the game three. Obviously, Pete Crow Armstrong in the bottom of the first. Huge. You know, with two outs. And then obviously, I mean, how can I bury Michael Bush on this? This is just the lead. I should set this off the top. You know, Michael, the the wind blowing in, 13 foot, whatever it is, and him aggressively drilling the first foot, the first at bat for a home run. I think everybody was just that was like my breaking point, was the top of the first infield. I didn't know who to be mad at. It's not like somebody just dropped the ball. It's just this utter state of confusion. And you're looking at James and you're like, this guy's ready to compete. Like, come on, somebody pick this guy up. And I talked about togetherness in the last show. Of just like when you're there to pick up those spots. And maybe it's too esoteric and it's not a real thing, right? I know people are gonna make this argument to me. It's just baseball, it's isolated individual incidents. You know, one thing doesn't have to do with the other thing. They're all isolated. But part of me is like, you know what, fuck that. Michael Bush is Michael Bush carried that into the into the bottom of the first inning. Michael Bush didn't make a play. He did not make a play in the top first. He lost the ball in the sun. Now we get caught in this umpire interpretation bullshit. And Michael Bush turns around the bottom of the first, hits a bomb 380. Just goes right to right center. You want to talk about being there and picking up a teammate. That's such good shit. Because right away, now we're just blank slate. No outs in the bottom of the first inning, and then we're able to just chip away. Horner gets a single, Tucker walks, you know. It was that crazy play from Sale Frelick in right field. That was an unbelievable sliding catch he had down the right field line. Then Ian Happ draws a walk. You know, obviously Carson Kelly strikes out, he's playing a lot. But that two-out single from Pete Crow Armstrong then puts us in a position where now they gotta bring in Nick Mears out of the bullpen, who did not anticipate pitch in the first inning. He's rushed. What does he do? Walks Swannee, spikes a fucking pitch, throws a throws a 51-foot cut fastball, Ian Hap scores. There's all the runs for the day. And going to the game, we said if we can get four runs today, I think we can win this game. Now, hopefully we do this tomorrow. It would be nice if we scored nine runs and won the game. But four runs at at home in a playoff situation should win you a baseball game. Even with our Island of Misfit Toys bullpen. Even if Jamison Tan, like all things equal, if everybody was healthy, Kate Horton, Justin Steele, if Shota wasn't terrible. You know, that guy's like, is he on the postseason roster? If everybody else was healthy and pitching well, is Jamison Tan even like sniffing a postseason start for the Cubs? Absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no. But this is just the hand were dealt, folks. This is the beauty of the sport. And I thought Jamison Tan was good enough tonight to turn it over to the bullpen, and like honestly, that's as simple as it sounds, and we've seen how complicated that's been for the first two games of this season, or first two games of the series, where we haven't even given our bullpen a chance at pitching these leverage innings. It's been fucking over in the first inning. Now, some people are gonna come back and say Daniel Palencia early, etc. Okay, I that could be a fair argument, but if you're gonna take Palencia giving up the three-run home run of Churio and say, okay, well, there's your first real taste of leverage, I don't know, it was pretty early in the game, and then we we sat down 15 straight hitters. Like I think 15 Cubs got retired in a row to end the game yesterday. So I should say game two. So just for game three purposes, it's like, you know, Kittridge gives up the home run. Who sees Kit? It's like that Kittridge hasn't is his high leverage. Boys, first taste is Padres. Which isn't that big of a deal. I'm just I'm just I'm just I'm just spitballing about how it's good that everybody in the bullpen got a nice little taste. And even if Kittridge gives up the bomb and the double, you know, not great to give up two extra base hits, he'll bounce back. If there's one guy in the bullpen I want I don't mind, or if there's one guy in the bullpen I trust to be sharp after not being sharp, it's Andrew Kittridge. If there's one guy, it's like I don't I don't care about a bad, I don't care about him not being absolute because I know he's such a he's such a quality professional. None of in one ear, out the other, none of this stuff matters. Goldfish memory. The next time he gets the ball, he will be the sharpest version of himself. Okay, now Brad Keller is a closer, just could not have asked for a better ninth inning. We're gonna just stay in the ballpen here for a second. I wanted to spend a lot of time on that first inning, just explain there's who who's blaming who on that. That was just weird, and a lot of credit should go to Jamison for just keeping it to one run because all the goofy stuff that's happened in the series up to that point, that could have been a breaking point. That could have been a huge breaking point. We get out, limit the damage, turn over the lineup, get our four runs on the board, and then clinch our butt cheeks for the rest of the game. Now let's complain a little bit about the lineup. We're gonna do that in a second. First, we gotta stay on the bullpen. Um, you know, the fact that you get to work Pomerance, Palencia, Kittridge, Tealbar, Keller, just like that, everybody gets a taste. I don't think anybody was overworked. 15 pitches, 18 pitches, 11. So that whole group's ready tomorrow. There's nobody who needs any time off for tomorrow. And then obviously, we don't say game five around here. I told you I'd kill you and cut your throat, but it is worth pointing out for scheduling purposes, there's an off day Friday. So for purposes tomorrow, when I say Pomeran's Palencia, Kittridge, Tielbar, Color, they all work tonight. For the most part, everybody did their job, right? Kittridge gave up the home gave up the home run, gave up the extra base hit to start the ninth. But then Tielbar comes in and just completely shuts him down into a situation where we get, I shouldn't say completely shuts him down, but Bryce Trang's a good hitter, strikes out a lot, made him look foolish. Like I thought, I thought Tielbar did his job, and the pitch he executed to William Contreras, which ultimately was a walk. And keep in mind William Contreras carries almost a 100-point average difference between his a 100-point difference between his batting average and his OBP. I believe he's walked 84 times this season, and you can fact check me on that. That's a guy with tremendous plate zone or plate discipline. Tremendous discipline. And so when you're going against him in that situation, the lefty on the righty, I was thinking, it's 4-3, we have a runner on second base. Obviously, we don't want to just automatically walk William Contreras and put the go-ahead run on first base and score on a double. That's stupid baseball. What you want to do is execute good pitches. And I thought even though Tielbar walked Contreras, those were perfectly executed pitches for the situation. And I have a tremendous amount of confidence in him for game four. Which is just honestly, when you looked at the bullpen before, if I told you that Tielbar would be in the A throwing nasty shit to Bryce Terrain under like such extreme circumstances, such tense circumstances. Would you really believe that at the start of the season? Caleb Tielbar is my age. I've said this before on the show, and it bears repeating. I believe he was out of affiliated baseball for like five years. He was a college pitching coach. He was helping other guys play the game. His time was done. You know, he's playing for the St. Paul Saints. It's this guy's career has been crazy. So to see him out there in the eighth inning, um, you know, after the Cheerio double to lead off the eighth, and then we come to Tielbar with nobody out and Bryce Tarang up. And I'm thinking, well, Tarang doesn't sacrifice Bun Ever, but like now would be a really weird time to do that. All he's got to do is hit a ball to the right side of the field. Just hit a ground ball to Nico Horner, you advance the runner to third base. And he was taking massive fucking swings, and Tielbar was up for the challenge. His mix was his mix was so sharp tonight, his curveball looked so good. And I thought, especially even though he didn't get contrarias, he walked contrarios, just the poison, the presence in that moment, which then turns around into the next plate appearance where you've got a double play situation and one out. Sale Freelick's a great runner, and he gets up and he's a great hitter. He's almost a 300 hitter in the big leagues. And Tilbar goes out and executes and gets a perfectly tailor-made double play ball. Now Freelick's like a grade 70 runner, maybe 65, 70-ish. I don't know if he's a 75-80, which means on the 2080 scouting scale, where 80 is like you're that's just like Roberto Clementy's arm, you know. That's Mason Miller's fastball. 70 is, you know, 70 is Daniel Palencia's fastball. No, Palencia is 85. What am I talking about? He's 80. And these these terminologies, I would like to apologize if I'm kind of confusing people here with the numerology. What I'm trying to say is Sal Frelick's a very good runner in that 90 what, 98% of Major League Baseball players have that double plate turned on them. Sale's very quick out of the box. It's actually an amazing thing how quick he gets down the first base side from like the time he makes contact to how quick he can accelerate into full speed, I believe is as high as anybody in Major League Baseball. Someone can fact check me on that. I know Bobby Witt's really high up there, too, but he's got to come from the right-handed side of the box. So I'm just going back to Tielbar here in the eighth inning. This ain't easy, buddy. We're going to keep Kittridge out there to get Jackson Churio, who's going to double off Pete Crow Armstrong's glove. Would have been a five-star catch. Probably one of the best catches of the season. Certainly the best catch of the postseason. He's on second base. Now you want to talk about a shit sandwich. Here comes Caleb Tielbar. Good luck, buddy. Bryce Tarang, the three-hitter, 800 OPS, a lot of strikeout, gets him to strike out. William Contreras battles his ass off against William Contreras. Really sharp stuff. He ends up drawing a walk. Now we got runners on first and second. And it's honestly, this is it. This is the baseball game. This is the baseball game right here. This is the most important plate appearance in it. Sale Frelick hitting a weak round ball to Nico Horner. Which then allows us to get to who? Brad Keller. So now we've got two outs, runners on first and third. Keller comes in. Keller, Keller's, I don't understand. Keller can't pitch out of the stretch. That's a weird thing we might want to clean up going into game four. I just have to giggle about this for a second. He hates pitching out of the stretch. Runners on first and third, four pitch walk. Then comes Jake Bauer, and immediately would that was the weird situation where Jake Bauer was stepping out of the box. He was trying to call time the umped in granite, and Keller still still whiffed by like two feet outside. So at that point, five pitches in the plate appearance. I think that was probably the peak. This is all coming to shit now, isn't it? Right? That's a challenging moment as a Cubs fan tonight. Top eight, two outs. Baces loaded. Brad Keller throws his pitch three feet outside while Jake Powers looking in the dugout, taking extra sign. Ball! And then comes back and just beats him with his fastball. And then has a nice ninth inning. Which I want to stress this in baseball. It's very important that guys have stuff not just to feel good about. Pete, you should feel good that you got that base hit in the first inning. No one cares about your feelings. I want stuff you can build off of. You know? Pete locked in on a meatball cutter in the first inning is something he can build off of. When you consider later in the game, okay, what went wrong with your strikeout? How would you do this? What went well, what didn't go well. You have stuff to build off of. But I want to keep this on the bullpen for a second, wrap it up, and then we'll get to the lineup and do a fair amount of pitching. But I love that these guys have stuff to build off. Pomeran's pitching a fifth inning. That had to feel weird. Right? Daniel Palencia's mechanics are just they continuously get worse, but he's got to feel good to go out there and get a scoreless inning after giving up a moon ball to Churio in game two. Right? He's probably been walking around feeling like I blew game two, I blew game two. So the fact he gets a scoreless, okay, we're rolling, baby. And like I already called out Kittredge, I'm just gonna do it again for emphasis. If there's one guy out of this entire mix who's gonna wake up tomorrow and he probably doesn't even know what he's he's already forgotten about it, guys. The next time he grips a ball, we will feel just as sharp and tight as he ever has. He will feel so good about himself because he's that type of professional. And if you don't believe me, let me draw a comparison. Imagine Ben Brown doing it. Like if Ben Brown gave up two extra base hits tonight, they had to take him out. He's pouty pants. You know, he'd be on a Zoom call with his mom after the game. I don't know, mom. I feel like Craig's mad at me. But like Kittridge is, and I I guess I I don't know if I hate this phrase or I don't know why we use this phrase. A real grown ass man. Isn't being a man inherent that you're there's something about saying grown ass. Well, I'm a grown man. When people say I'm a grown man, he's a gr he's a grown ass man. When I look at Andrew Kittredge, he's a grown man. This is he's in a country music video about grown ass men that do manly shit. He's as perfectly stereotypical, bowpen fucking doesn't get doesn't give a shit. Gonna cut a fart on the guy next to him with a big dip in his mouth, make the rookie carry the bag, and just have a good old-fashioned time. He might be one of my favorite relievers, not just Cubs. I love the way this guy carries himself. And maybe I'm being a little over the top here, uh, but what I'm trying to do is just at least stir or kind of give you guys some positivity towards Kittridge, because in the mix he was the one who, you know, really didn't execute. And that's okay because we got to play him tomorrow. And I think in the mix, and this is the entire point of bringing this up, is that I trust Kittridge to execute tomorrow. And I trust that all these guys are building off of this positively, meaning that if we get into a situation with Matt Boyd starting tomorrow, it's not the end of the earth if we just get him through the lineup one time. And we'll talk about game four tomorrow morning. I'm gonna talk about tonight just a couple more things about the lineup and stuff I don't love. Um Ian Hap taking two walks. I know people are up his ass, and I know that he struck out twice, but also the fact that he's drawn two walks in these pressure-packed moments. There's something about how stone cold that guy is around the strike zone. Like, I know he let there's moments. Come on, hap. Insurance runs at the end of the game. And I'm not I'm this is more about like Ian Hap for tomorrow, but just an observation from tonight. I do like the fact that he isn't, he's not like it's not like in the he's not changing himself. And I know a lot of people want him to change. This is like a crazy argument I'm trying to make about Ian Hap. But this is what happens when you talk into the void, guys. Alright, just please respect the process that's going through in my brain to try and articulate this clearly because I have a certain feeling about him that's positive about tonight that I know does not exist anywhere else. Not in the internet, not in your dad's brain, not in your group chat, your mom's not gonna tell you this about Ian Hap. But the two walks tonight, the two walks tonight, the confidence, the fact that he is not pressing, because I think I would in his situation, and I know there's people are gonna come back and say he is pressing, he looks like shit. He's hit no 95 in the series. I do think if he was looking more like an asshole, then I'd be a little bit more nervous about him. If he looked more like an asshole, he still has this incredible cool demeanor about where the strike zone is and all this stuff. So just building off some positivities. The only reason I'm saying this is because everybody else is just gonna shit out of Ian Hep, call him a bum, say he sucks, he shouldn't be in the lineup, he's crap. You know, if Kyle Tucker could walk, play him in left field and DH Moises by a sterilos, maybe that's not a bad idea. I'm just offering up like silver lining here from Ian Hep. Obviously, two strikeouts, one in a huge situation. You know, a lot of people mad about him. I think he's still seeing the ball well. I think it's just a matter of fucking. I know, I know. It's like playing golf with your buddy, you just see this guy go out of bounds on every single T-bux. And now we're on 18. I'm like, I don't, I think you should hit driver. Let the big dog eat. Why? I don't know. I feel like he's gonna find the fair way. And maybe I'm wrong about that. I know I'm pissing a lot of people off, talking even remotely happy or positive about Ian Hap because some people would rather consider, yeah, he should sit down. We should get anybody else. So get mad. You want to be mad about Ian Hap, that's your prerogative. I'm not telling people don't be mad, don't say he doesn't suck, don't say he didn't let you down tonight towards the end of the game. I'm not I'm not trying to bring people with me on mistake. I'm just saying I'm gonna stand over here with it and be like, hey, on the bright side, on the other hand, you know, I don't think it's a complete lost cause. Other stuff, didn't love Carson Kelly tonight. He's catching a lot of games, though, and the pressure of just having to manage the pitching staff, that's a lot. The game plan and that goes in, especially against this Brewers lineup, because you really have to be like technical in your execution. You can't just go out there and rip fastball slider against these guys. So he's been doing a lot of homework. He probably does consistently, anyways, because he's a professional catcher, but I'm just saying the circumstances of this it does take a mental toll on the catcher. And it doesn't seem like there's going to be any relief coming, which is fine. We're going to the fourth game series, fourth game of the series, anyways. So he can just, you know, build off of the experience of the last three games, being behind the plate, seeing these swings, and that's starting to become more way more important than whatever he's doing in the batter's box. So then the question is, you know, for game four, like, do I want to see Carson Kelly hit sixth again? You know, and does his shit matter? But then I'd say, okay, well, Nico Horner's hitting second. Does that matter? Absolutely. Nico Horner sets the tone and hits the ball with authority uh is as well as any player I can remember in a Cubs uniform, right-handed, without what, being a big power drop and drive guy. Now he's just solid. He's so solid, I'm trying to think of a good comparison where the at-bat quality is just remarkably high. Um and I and I guess one that comes to mind for former right-handed hitters from Cubs, and this is a way different hitter. This guy hit for way more power. But from the standpoint of professionalism in the batter's box, the standpoint of having a game plan to beat a pitcher and hit the ball where it's pitched, Aramis Ramirez did that shit all the time. He struck out way more, obviously, way more. They're completely different uh output, way more slug, completely different. People are gonna think I'm crazy for comparing the two, but from the professionalism standpoint, when they're in the box, how comfortably do you feel with Nico Horner?

unknown: 34:57

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 34:57

When Ram, and I mean there's people listening who don't even remember him, but we're just talking about the comfort level that Nico Horner brings, and it's just another great game from him. Two for four, he's hitting 391 on the series. So and really just underrated. It's crazy. Like he is such an engine, he's such a go-getter. Bush hits a leadoff homer, Nico Horner keeps it rolling, baby. Um, Kyle Tucker gets on base a bunch tonight. That's awesome. He he still he still looks a little it's kind of crazy how talented you have to be to he clearly is hurt and his leg is fucked up. I mean, he can't play in the field, and to still go two for three and to still have just complete mastery over the strike zone and draw a walk like that, to get on base three times tonight on like a bum leg, we I mean it's obvious Kyle Tucker can't hit for power. If you want, did anybody listen to this? Go to the game. If you can, if someone can, please go to game four and just get in early for BP. And as I say this, I remember now Kyle Tucker doesn't take BP on the field. So don't go early for BP and get a report. But my request would be see, if he did hit on the field, I don't think he'd be hitting anything even close. I don't, it would look so weird. His swing looks so weird. All the power is generated from the pitcher, and even saying that, two for three tonight with a walk, it just speaks his hand-eye, his hand-eye coordination is off the charts. His hand-eye coordination has to just be like these were talking about like Ted Williams flying fighter planes in World War II and then coming back and hitting 386. Like that's that's in the history of baseball, you talk about hand-eye coordination. It's like, yeah, Ted Williams was a hitter and one of the greatest fighter pilots of his time. That's the highest obvious level of hand-eye coordination of baseball. The next tier below that, you know, do we want Tony? Obviously, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs. That's a that's a whole other big tier. And then I'll say, like, guys like Kyle Tucker, maybe third, fourth tier or something. You know, we're talking about legends in the game here. But that's essentially a valid comparable based on what we see from Kyle Tucker. Hurt is a maimed player, and then he's still able to fucking how is he somehow barreling balls in a right center? Because he doesn't look good. He's our three-hitter and we're rolling with it, baby. And he plays tomorrow. And you know why? Because we went tonight 4-3 against the Brewers. So a couple other things, good to see, like Say had not ice cold. Say is not ice cold. Should have had a double in the first inning. Thought he smoked that ball from Quinn Priester, stayed on it. Sale Freelick, made that great catch down the right field line. So that's a positive thing going into game four. Like, say is still foot down. It's not like he's he's cooled off. We talked about he had like six homers in five games, and then so like it's okay that say it didn't hit two or three homers tonight. We can still say that he is hot or at least rolling with his foot down. Does that make sense? We talked about Ian Epp. A lot of people are gonna be mad about him. I'm just throwing you guys a bone. You don't have to eat it, you don't have to take it, you don't have to like it. You don't have to. You know, the conversation for tomorrow will be lineup. What are we gonna do? Should he be hitting fifth? What are we gonna do with Carson Kelly? Does he deserve does he like deserve a break? Or no? I would say again, I'm gonna go back to the fact he's already caught three games. He's set, he's he's the pitchcom guy at this point. He's calling the game, guys. So Matt, the one thing I thought was interesting today, I thought Willie Castro would get a start over Matt Shaw. When I've been waiting this long to uh to address this because I think people are gonna want to hang me for even mentioning Willie Castro in a playoff lineup, and I'm actually kind of mad at myself that I even got to this point. But I thought right on left, Quinn Priester has an OBP against 330 for lefties, and it's 280 for righties, and that's a 50-point difference that's a big difference, and we're talking about a nine-hitter, talking about guy hasn't been, you know, has been awesome. I don't think I don't think he has a hit this series yet. So I thought, oh, here's a chance. They might put Willie Castro at third, but then I guess in the counter is Shaw's defense. It must be that much better than Willie Castro's. Which I mean, I know that's a fair argument. If you and I were sitting at up all right now talking about this, I of course Matt Shaw's a better third baseman than Willie Castro. But what about the 50-point difference in OBP against from Quinn Priester? Didn't ultimately matter. You know what I mean? Matt Shaw didn't even end up seeing Quinn Priester because he he was he was already out of the game, which is awesome. But just going through the lineup, making some observations about these guys as I think about it tomorrow. We feel really good about Michael Bush. And I would imagine not just today, but multiple times over the course of the year, I've can I've referred to him as Matt Bush a thousand times. Matt Bush, I believe, was the number one overall pick in 2004, and is like historically regarded as like one of the saddest fallout cases in baseball. So that's just embedded in the back of my head when I see M. Bush when you're talking about Michael Bush. Sometimes you say Matt Bush. Because if you're in the game, you're a baseball guy, and you know, you know the story about Matt. It's just an unbelievably ridiculous, sad story. And that's not a tangent we're here to talk about. When I say sad, I mean the guy sounds like he's I'm not judging him. He's just this guy's had a rough tough. He's done dumb shit with his life, he's been judged by the criminal justice system. Uh, you know, that's up to you how fairly or not. The guy's had a tough go. This is such a deep, weird tangent on the fact that I accidentally call Michael Bush Matt Bush every now and then. But that's just a lurking thing in the back of the head that I I know baseball guys out there can relate to that. And they're like, yeah, of course, I remember that Matt Bush story. Think like Josh Hamilton without making it back. Um, we feel really good about Michael Bush. Again, almost just called him Matt. We feel really good about him. And he's emerging this year into becoming somebody that I just treasure. And I'm like, wow, I just love watching you play, love the understatedness to him, love that I don't know what his voice sounds like. You know, just love the quality at bat. As we talked yesterday, pitch to pitch. That fucking guy lives pitch to pitch to pitch to pitch to pitch. He don't give a shit at bat, bad game. And what I mean is he doesn't care if he has a bat at bat, it's not gonna influence his next at bat. If he has a disappointing plate appearance, he's not gonna get up there in the third inning, crabby with the umpire because he thought he got squeezed on, and he's gotta let everybody know his feelings are hurt and he's got to show people up. This dude's all fucking business, and I gotta watch the F words, but I want to emphasize how how much business Michael Bush is, and he's all fucking business, folks. He is, you know, and the same thing goes with Nico Horner. I love having those two guys at the top. If Kyle Tucker was healthy, I'd lump the same thing into the love. It's it's tough watching him. He played well tonight, he's clearly not himself. But we have all business at that top, you know, and then you get into say Suzuki, and this is kind of where I want to make that argument again with Ian Hap about I don't think the demeanor of what he's looking for has changed. It could be a timing thing. Maybe he wasn't seeing the ball well today, but the I mean, obviously, if he's taking two walks, that's the argument. The discipline's there, you know. I do like that professionalism. I still have some quite Carson Kelly. He just smashes mistakes, so he's a hard guy to criticize. I hopefully we've told this narrative throughout the year. He just smashes mistakes. So, like, that's a good thing we're gonna be looking for tomorrow. Today, didn't happen. So you just hang your hat on the fact he's been the guy behind the dish for the you know the entire playoffs. This is just the way it's gonna be. P Crow Armstrong, some success early, some asshole swings. You know, Dansby Swanson, obviously later in the game, looking to hit a home run. I like that from him. I like that he can gear in and try and pull. They were just foul balls, they were just like if you're looking, if you're trying to remember something that happened, it wasn't anything significant. It was more about the action of the foul ball, and you could tell from the lower half he was trying to cheat to get a home run, which in these circumstances, like I kind of like that a lot from Dansby Swanson. Because that's a time you want to cheat to try and get a solo, go right ahead, my friend. And then obviously, Matt Shaw, we've been through with this. Hasn't gotten to hit this series. He does take monster hacks. You know, could he run into one for tomorrow? He does look like he's searching for something, which I hate because he found it in the second half. He's got some confidence stuff, some emotional stuff. He'll work through it, he'll get older, he'll be awesome. I promise you. I promise you, with everything I can promise anybody about anything, that Matt Shaw will be an awesome, amazing, like perennial all-star, just a standout guy for the Chicago Cubs for a very long time. Right now, he's just in this process. He's looking, he's searching, he's nervous, he's wow. It's a guy who takes a field and looks over at Dan's. He's like, wow, there's man, it's really crazy here today, huh? You know, and Dan's like, yeah, dude, it's the playoffs. You know, this is like Matt Shaw coming out before BP to play catching the outfield and like just really soaking it in, which you want these guys to. This is why you play the game. You love the game. But I mean, really soaking it in, where it's like, this is so sick. You're like, yeah, yeah, dude, we know. Quinn Priester's pitching. You know, go watch the Skyrimport. I can't believe how much people love the cops. This is like the coolest thing ever. That's what I think of Matt Shaw. He's just walking like this is like, I'm the most, I'm just like the luckiest guy I get to do this for a living. That's Matt Shaw to me right now, and I think he'll grow out of that through experience. But this is his first postseason, and I think he's kind of reverting uh at least offensively or in his demeanor offensively, back to the guy that we saw in the first half, that was really overwhelmed and making adjustments to be a big league third baseman. And he ultimately did that. So we're not holding out uh, or we're not not holding out hope, I should say. We're not shitting on this guy. I just it would be nice if the second half version of Matt Shaw, who had like a chip on his shoulder because people were talking about replacing him at the trade deadline. And then that guy was somebody who was like, fuck all you guys. You want to replace me? You don't want to replace me. I'm gonna I'm gonna show you guys how good I am at baseball. We need that mentality back from Matt Shaw, and maybe he still has it. Maybe I'm overreacting to a small sample size. But those are my reactions to the lineup. I'm open to some changes for tomorrow. We're getting up to the 45 minute mark in the episode where I told you guys we get here, just turn it off. So I'll just wrap it up and say this. We won an elimination baseball game tonight. We were backed into a corner, we did what we've done all year long, and we came out, we performed under the most pressure-packed moments. And we have an opportunity to do it again tomorrow. And Matt Boyd should be on the mound with full rest. We've got an entire bullpen that not one person threw over 20 pitches today with an off day looming. We have 40,000 faithful at Wrigley Field ready to tear that place down, ready to send the Brewers packing north with their butts clenched for game five. We're there. We have that. And I think the lineup tomorrow shows up. Everybody has something positive to build off of. No one gets to hang their head. They did it after game one, they hung their head after game two. We had to take an off day. You come out today, they finally get a chance to feel good about themselves again and build off of that and feel like this series is ours, and we just got to play it pitch to pitch. We have the bullpen experience. We have the guys that went out there, felt it, live through it, they're ready to do it again tomorrow. And there is nobody, nobody, who wants to rectify the wrongs that they've done in this series more than Matt Boyd. He has been so mad at himself since game one, and so livid that he blew an opportunity to even compete. I can't wait to see what he looks like tomorrow night. And I know that everyone's gonna be behind him. He's way better at Wrigley Field. It just sets up perfectly for us. This game four, and I'm excited to preview it tomorrow morning. Got to get the recap out now. Just want to share some love with you guys. Been so much fun doing these Monday morning cub shows down the postseason run. It has been so much fun to partner with Thirsty Vicero and just continue this conversation. Like I said in the show, I'm not ready to give it up. I want to win tomorrow. I want to keep this fucking thing rolling. I want more lineup previews, I want more post-game. This is what it's all about. So be happy, be proud, get some rest tonight, and then let's show up tomorrow. Let's be really sharp and let's beat the shit out of the Milwaukee Brewers.