The Chicago Cubs have been on the losing end of plenty of shocking defeats, but on Tuesday night it was their turn to shock the world as they scored four runs in the top of the ninth inning to beat the San Francisco Giants 6-5 and advance to the National League Championship Series.
The Cubs went into that ninth inning trailing 5-2, but they methodically worked their way through the Giants’ bullpen and got some big hits at big moments. Willson Contreras slashed an RBI single that tied the game at 5-5, and Javier Baez finished off the rally with a single of his own to give the Cubs an improbable one-run victory.
Here’s how improbable the victory was: according to Fangraphs, the Cubs had a 1.7 percent chance of winning the game when Conor Gillaspie got a base hit in the bottom of the eighth, and they only had a 2.5 percent chance of winning the game after they got out of the bottom of the eighth inning with a double play.
In fact, the Cubs’ comeback is not only remarkable from a math perspective, but it’s also historic. Their three-run comeback matches the biggest margin ever overcome in an elimination game, tying the 1986 New York Mets, who trailed by three runs in the final game of the NLCS and came back to win and advance to the World Series.
The Cubs also made some team history of their own, as their ninth inning comeback was nearly unprecedented in the annals of team history. According to Elias Sports Bureau, the ninth inning comeback was the first of its kind in a playoff game since they came back and beat the Philadelphia A’s during Game 4 of the 1910 World Series.
In that game, the Cubs trailed 3-2 going into the bottom of the ninth inning, but Frank Chance hit an RBI triple in the ninth and Jimmy Sheckard hit an RBI single in the bottom of the 10th inning to win the game for the Cubs and keep their championship hopes alive.
To top everything else off, the Cubs did something that they had never done in team history: win a playoff game west of St. Louis. Before Tuesday’s game, the Cubs had lost their first 10 playoff games contested west of St. Louis, including three in San Diego, four in San Francisco, two in Arizona, and one in Los Angeles. That all changed on Tuesday thanks to their win, which also broke the Giants’ 10-game winning streak in games where they faced elimination.
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The loss was also a historic one for the Giants, as it marked the first time since Game 3 of the 1911 World Series that they blew a lead in the ninth inning of a postseason game. In that game, the Giants gave up a run in the top of the ninth and two more in the top of the 11th to lose to the vaunted A’s, who apparently specialized in participating in historic games during those years.
Needless to say, the fifth playoff series triumph in the entire history of the Chicago Cubs was a historic one, and one that leaves them one step closer to finally getting back to the World Series after a 71-year absence.
