CHICAGO — Drew Pomeranz walked off the Wrigley Field mound in the seventh inning on Thursday, the thunderous roar of the 41,770 fans in attendance blaring and soaked it all in.
“Wow, this is awesome,” the 36-year-old left-hander thought.
This wasn’t meant to happen.
He wasn’t supposed to be a key reliever on a Cubs team one win away from the NL Championship Series after beating the Milwaukee Brewers 6-0 at Wrigley Field to force a winner-take-all Game 5 on Saturday at American Family Field. Pomeranz tossed a perfect seventh inning and has yet to allow a baserunner in five appearances in October.
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Back in April, Pomeranz was just yearning for another shot in the majors. Pitching in the postseason in front of a large crowd may as well have been a pipe dream.
The veteran reliever was in Triple-A with the Seattle Mariners, four years removed from last rifling a pitch in the major leagues and just hoping, wishing and praying he could throw one more time in the major leagues.
“I was literally just wanting one more outing,” Pomeranz said. “I just wanted to get out there and pitch one more time.”
That opportunity came on April 25, two days after the Cubs acquired him in a minor-league trade, since he had an upward mobility clause in his contract. The Seattle Mariners weren’t going to call him up, but the Cubs, desperate for relief help, took a flier on the veteran left-hander.
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They couldn’t have dreamt up what would happen next in their wildest projections.
Pomeranz pitched a scoreless eighth inning on that April day in a Cubs’ win, starting a stretch of 26 appearances (23.1 innings) without allowing an earned run. He finished the year with a 2.17 ERA in 57 appearances and was an intriguing arm in Craig Counsell’s bullpen heading into October.
Just before the playoffs began, the Cubs held a team meeting. Counsell spoke to his team and delivered a simple message: “Just go out there. You don’t have to do anything different,” Pomeranz recalled the manager saying.
“I think when you start to think you have to do something different, you put extra pressure on yourself, and you try and be not yourself,” Pomeranz said. “And I think that is when you start to struggle in these big moments. As a team, we’ve embraced that.
“Go out there and keep doing what we’ve been doing, just keep grinding and keep attacking guys and just continue on.”
That’s led to a perfect postseason for him. He’s faced 15 batters and retired all of them.
That includes a perfect seventh inning in the Game 4 win over the Milwaukee Brewers Thursday night at Wrigley Field.
“It’s incredible watching him pitch every day,” Daniel Palencia said. “He’s always ready. It’s impressive seeing someone who isn’t scared and attacks and is aggressive.”
Pomeranz has been a lift to the bullpen, and Counsell doesn’t need to save him for only left-handed hitting pockets. Righties hit just .234 against him, and he struck them out at a modest 23.6% clip in the regular season.
“I think Drew was the guy kind of that I thought was going to be important to this bullpen in the postseason,” Counsell said. “Drew has certainly become an integral cog in that kind of bullpen decisions and he’s handling his innings.”
Pomeranz’s stuff has been crisp this year; there’s no denying it’s contributed to his success. But his mentality has played a key role, too. When he returned to the majors six months ago, he had accomplished what he set out to do.
He’s just playing with house money at this point, and that makes a deadly combination.
“I think the best you can be is when you are able to put results aside, and when you have that kind of mindset that he’s got – kind of whether it’s his last hurrah or whatever it is. But knowing how to get out and then having the stuff to match it, I think it’s just kind of a perfect storm for him,” right-hander Andrew Kittredge said. “He knows what he’s doing, and his stuff’s playing right now.”
But Pomeranz still takes a moment to appreciate days like Thursday and environments like he’s lived through in the playoffs. More importantly, he treasures the little things of being a major leaguer: The camaraderie of a big-league clubhouse, the chit-chatting in the bullpen or seeing 40,000 plus people celebrate you.
“Every day I look around, I’m like, ‘holy crap,’” Pomeranz said. “In the game, you take those pause moments and look around at what’s going on, just like, holy s–t, this is awesome. Those are things that I try to do every day.
“I just wanted to get out there and pitch one more time, and here I am, however many appearances later. It just doesn’t feel real sometimes. But I don’t take one single second for granted here, not at all.”
