NLCS - Going Back to Chicago

By Tom Renbarger

Josh Beckett's masterful two-hit shutout last night against the Cubs extends the NLCS to a sixth game. So what? it might be asked, that just means the Marlins will be eliminated at the hands of Mark Prior, because he's not going to lose, right? And if the Marlins somehow beat him, they surely won't beat Prior and Kerry Wood on consecutive nights.

This will be the conventional wisdom, and in this case, the conventional wisdom will have a lot going for it. It's true that the Marlins were able to scratch out three runs against Wood in Game 3, but late-inning heroics by Tom Goodwin, Randall Simon and Doug Glanville made Game 3 The One That Got Away for Florida.

Would Wood be as sloppy in a putative Game 7 as he was in Game 3? I don't think so, at least not if his Game 5 NLDS performance against the Braves is any indication.

The late innings of Game 4 seemed to be auditions for a possible Game 6 starterfor the Marlins. After the Cubs got a first-inning grand slam off the bat of Aramis Ramirez, they knocked starter Dontrelle Willis out in the third, eventually building a 7-0 lead that Matt Clement had little trouble making stand up. The final two innings saw Brad Penny and Carl Pavano each throw an inning of relief. Penny loaded th ebases in the eighth before wriggling off the hook, and Pavano had a 1-2-3 ninth, striking out two. Pavano has not allowed a run in 5 1/3 innings of postseason work, and looks to be the favorite to get the call for the Marlins in Game 6 against Prior, given how badly the Cubs roughed up Penny in Game 2.

The long ball has been the key in a surprisingly potent offensive display from both teams. The side with more dingers has been the winner in each of the five games so far. The first two games of the series saw unseasonably warm weather in Chicago, which aided in the ball flying out of Wrigley. I don't think the Marlins will win another slugfest in Chicago, not off of Prior or Wood; they may want to hope for some cold weather, oddly enough, to dampen the long ball off the Cubs bats. To some extent their biggest hope may lay in the fact that both the Cubs aces have already logged around 230 innings -- will Games 6 and 7 be the games they finally run out of gas? If not, the Marlins will have to find a way to scratch out some runs against Prior and Wood, working deep into the count and stealing some bases. They're also going toneed to take the lead early; they may have four of their five wins as comebacks, but Prior and Wood won't let them back into a game if they fall behind, not with a trip to the World Series on the line.

Having written all this, it says here that Prior gives the Cubs eight strong innings in Game 6, leading the Cubs to their first World Series appearance since 1945. He simply won't let them lose. Furthermore, the Cubs have just enough guys having good at bats in Lofton, Sosa, Alou, Ramirez, Karros, and Gonzalez that they should be able to supply the run support Prior needs to lift the Cubs to the NL title.