The National League Wild Card game has once again come and gone, and for the third time in three years, the Pittsburgh Pirates have hosted. Also, for the second time in those three years, the Pirates have LOST. This year’s NL Wild Card game featured the Pirates as well as the shocking Chicago Cubs. At the beginning of the season, when the PECOTA predictions came out, the Cubs were predicted to finish third in the division, which they did, and finish one game behind the San Diego Padres for the second wild card spot. PECOTA measures, based on statistics and sabermetrics from the past year, project how a team might end up at the end of a season. Also at the beginning of the season, the President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein said that the Cubs were still “one-year away.”

The game started out with a bang. The Cubs entered the field of play to a chorus of boos and jeers from the crowd. The Cubs took first blood when Dexter Fowler scored on a Kyle Schwarber single. Cubs led 1-0. Later, in the third inning, Schwarber sent a 1-2 slider from Pirates starter Gerrit Cole 450 feet into the night, which came down eventually in the Allegheny River beyond the right field bleachers making the score 3-0. The scoring would end in the fifth inning when Dexter Fowler connected on a pitch from Cole to bring the score to 4-0. Tempers would flare though in the 7^th inning when Jake Arrieta was hit by a pitch. He and Pirates first baseman Sean Rodriguez would have words, which eventually led to a bench-clearing brawl. Sean Rodriguez would later be ejected for throwing a punch at Schwarber. While the umpires were conferring, Rodriguez took his frustrations out on a Gatorade cooler, which prompted social media to blow up. Someone even went as far as to create a Twitter account for the cooler. Rodriguez was taken out in the third after getting the start but was held without an at bat.

The biggest story of the night though was probably the pitching matchup, on the Cubs side, Jake Arrieta, a Cy Young nominee, and on the Pittsburgh side, Gerrit Cole, another legitimate ace. Arrieta has had a very impressive year. He is 22-6 with an ERA under 1.80. He is the first Cub to achieve a 20-win season since Jon Lieber did it in 2001.