1. Well that wasn’t very much fun.
Jake Arrieta was sick and got rocked. Anthony Rizzo and Willson Contreras got in an argument in the dugout. The Cubs lost to the Giants’ worst starting pitching option. The vibe was bad.
2. Good thing they swept the Padres!
That said, again, if the Cubs win one of these next two they’ll have gone 4-3 on the week, which was the goal. And the most likely outcome is that they win one of these next two.
3. Jake Arrieta is a little bit of an issue right now.
He’s not pitching great. To our knowledge, he won’t get vaccinated. Yesterday, he was barfing and didn’t ask to just not pitch, which is something he could have done that would have helped the Cubs (Keegan Thompson is on this roster, Jake). The hope with Arrieta was that he’d be a good veteran presence in the rotation—a guy who might have a 5.20 ERA but would get through five or six innings every start. After last night he has a 5.26 ERA, but his xERA’s all the way up at 6.04 and his FIP isn’t much better. He’s also averaging fewer than five innings a start, and while some of that’s the cut on his finger and barfing, Arrieta’s not at a point in his career where he can warrior through stuff. Those days are over. He needs to be a wily veteran, he’s trying to be a warrior instead, and it isn’t working.
You can win games with Jake Arrieta, but not a ton of them, and his role in exposing the Cubs to the risk of contact tracing IL stints is frustrating and should piss a lot of people off if that scenario does end up affecting the Cubs (Eric Sogard, another nonperformer, is also presumably in this group, and I wonder whether there’ll be a labor lawsuit from a team cutting an unvaccinated player down the line).
Hopefully it works out. Arrieta was the man for so long, and has reportedly been so good about helping mentor Adbert Alzolay, and is such a Cubs hero that you want to have a wonderful relationship with him until the end of time (and I do think there’s a place for respect and compassion with this vaccine stuff, even if there should be some heavy encouragement on one’s fellow people to get vaccinated, especially as it helps protect those at the most risk by limiting potential vectors for the virus, which does still exist and is still killing people).
4. The Contreras/Rizzo thing shouldn’t be an issue.
Rizzo’s gotten mad at Contreras before for throwing the ball too hard to first, and they’ve made it through that, and I do think there’s a spin on this where you can say that Rizzo is matching Contreras’s competitive fire right now, which is an awesome explanation if true because it shows that Rizzo believes the Cubs can win.
On Opening Day, Anthony Rizzo hit a double, and he was fired up at second base. It was on the heels of the contract spat, and it looked, at least to me, like Rizzo wanted to tell the fans that he loved them and knew they loved him and that dammit he wanted to keep this thing going or get it going again if it was comatose. That was my impression at the time, at least. Maybe others took it differently. But that was how I took it, and that’s how I’m going to take this, for now anyway. Also, it’s hard to imagine either of these guys getting salty with the team. Hard to think of two better guys to have get into it if two guys are going to get into it.
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Around the Division:
The Brewers kept eating their vegetables, beating the Diamondbacks 5-1 and passing the Cardinals, who lost to the Reds 6-4 and lost Kwang Hyun Kim to a back thing that hopefully won’t keep him out very long.
Standings, FanGraphs division championship probabilities:
1. Cubs: 32-25, 28.2%
2. Milwaukee: 31-26, 48.3%
3. St. Louis: 31-27, 16.0%
4. Cincinnati: 26-29, 7.5%
5. Pittsburgh: 22-34, 0.0%
It’s Tyler Mahle vs. Johan Oviedo in St. Louis this afternoon, which isn’t a great situation for the Cardinals. It’s Merrill Kelly vs. Brandon Woodruff in Milwaukee, which is a great situation for the Brewers, who as you may have noted are now just a game back of the Cubs for the division lead.
Up Next:
Game 2
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Whom:
Cubs vs. San Francisco
When:
6:15 PM Chicago Time
Where:
Oracle Park
Weather:
It is still San Francisco. Temperatures in the 60’s, wind blowing out again but it always does that.
Starting Pitchers:
Kohl Stewart vs. Kevin Gausman
The Opponent:
Gausman’s a Cy Young candidate, sixth in the majors in pitching fWAR. He’s got a 1.40 ERA, a 2.20 FIP, and a 2.81 xERA. He’s averaging more than six innings a start. So, uh, SHIT!
Oh, also, he hasn’t given up a run since May 14th and he hasn’t given up more than one run in a start since April 13th and man, not a great matchup for our guy Kohl Stewart.
The Numbers:
The Cubs are a +150 underdog, with the Giants at -160. That comes out to a 38% chance of a win or so after factoring in the vig. The over/under’s at 7½ and favors the over, and I don’t know about that, but I’m also irrationally high on Kohl Stewart.
Cubs News:
Jake Marisnick took batting practice in San Francisco yesterday, and both he and Jason Heyward were said to have a “day off,” which makes it sound like they could come off the IL today. One thing to note with the DFA conversation is that Sogard is a left-handed bat and the Cubs don’t have a ton of those.
Cubs Thoughts:
The odds will be better tomorrow, with Kyle Hendricks facing Johnny Cueto, but even then, I’d guess the Cubs are an underdog. So winning today would relieve a little stress, especially with the Brewers on the Cubs’ ass right now. But hey, if they lose, they lose, and they can bounce back from that, because the Cubs are a competitive team (and the Brewers, though better than the Cubs on paper because holy shit do they have good pitching, aren’t that much better than the Cubs on paper).
