Paul Sullivan: Revenge of Wrigley Field? How else can anyone explain Cubs' lack of offense in 2020 after another early playoff exit?

CHICAGO — Over the course of this pandemic-shortened season, Chicago Cubs manager David Ross and President Theo Epstein were at a loss for words when asked to explain their team’s inability to hit at Wrigley Field.

It was a constant annoyance and the main reason so many Cubs fans looked at the postseason as a gift from the heavens rather than a realistic opportunity to get back to the World Series.

Under ordinary circumstances, no team could have a prayer of winning a championship without the ability to score runs.

But in an abnormal season like this one, who knows what could’ve happen?

Even a team whose season was put on pause after 18 positive COVID-19 tests theoretically could win it all, and the Miami Marlin will try to prove just that after sweeping the Cubs in their National League wild-card series to advance to the division series in the Houston bubble.

The Cubs are a team of familiar faces, including a core that has played together the last six years. After their COVID-19 outbreak, the Marlins returned to play Aug. 4 in Baltimore after adding 17 new players to the roster to replace the ones who had tested positive.

It’s a script no one would have believed, featuring a team no ones knows, in a year that gets more surreal by the day.

The Cubs, with zero positive COVID-19 tests this season, are done.

“It was a hard season for sure, mentally, physically, emotionally,” Ross said. “There’s still teams going, and that’s not trying to be an excuse. This is just fact — 2020 is no joke.”

The Cubs wound up with five hits Friday in their 2-0 loss at Wrigley, a virtual rerun of the Game 1 defeat in which Kyle Hendricks threw one bad pitch. Substitute Hendricks’ name with Yu Darvish and you have bookends.

Where Epstein goes from here is anyone’s guess.

Blow it up? Modified rebuild? One more chance in a normal season?

“Who knows where the game is going to go, where this country is going go, where life is going to go,” first baseman Anthony Rizzo said. “Baseball next year seems so far away right now.”

Rizzo described himself as “numb” after the Game 2 loss. Kris Bryant said it was a “weird feeling” because of the shutdown in March, the ramp-up in July, the sprint to the NL Central title and the sudden exit in October.

“It’s like, hey, here’s the season, it’s 60 games, go out there and sprint,” Bryant said. “Then we’re in the playoffs and we get punched in the teeth two games in a row and now we’re here. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve experienced maybe my whole life.”

At least the Cubs stuck together, and all the stars were accountable. They lined up afterward for one last gloom-and-doom Zoom.

“It’s not easy when things were normal,” right fielder Jason Heyward said. “It goes without saying things aren’t normal. This is not any consolation, but I let them know I was proud to go to battle with them.”

Every game this season at Wrigley began with a highlights-package music video on the left-field video board that started with the phrase: “This Is Who We Are.”

But the 2016 championship is ancient history, and maybe this is who the Cubs are now.

Since their 2-1, 13-inning loss to the Rockies in the 2018 wild-card game at Wrigley, the Cubs have hit .182 in three postseason home games, scoring only two runs in 31 innings. They strung together two hits in an inning only twice in those games.

Ross said it was “uncharacteristic of who they are,” but last year’s fade and postseason letdowns in 2018 and ’20 suggest otherwise. And that’s why they might look very different in 2021.

“You’ve got guys in this clubhouse you’ll never be teammates with again,” Rizzo said.

The moment of truth came Friday in the fourth inning when Contreras was thrown out at the plate in a scoreless game after hesitating to break from second on Heyward’s line single to right. The throw from right fielder Matt Joyce easily nailed Contreras at the plate.

Contreras said the liner was hard to read, adding he probably shouldn’t have been sent home.

“We made a decision, it was probably not the best,” he said. “But we have no regrets over that.”

Darvish was at his best Friday, shutting out the Marlins into the seventh before Garrett Cooper’s solo home run to left. In your heart and head, you knew right then it was over.

Heyward, the Cubs’ only clutch hitter all season, doubled leading off the ninth against ex-Cub Brandon Kintzler before Baez, David Bote and Jason Kipnis struck out to end it. Appropriately, the final three White Sox hitters also struck out in the ninth to end their brief playoff run Thursday against the A’s in Oakland, Calif.

Chicago baseball symmetry. Catch it.

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