Not a lot to say about last night, except that Brad Miller has really reinvented himself since leaving the Bulls.
***
Around the Division:
The Brewers pulled past the Reds to win 5-3 yesterday. The Cardinals were off.
Standings, FanGraphs division championship probabilities:
1. Milwaukee: 53-36, 89.2%
2. Cincinnati: 45-42, 7.3%
T-3. Cubs: 43-45, 2.4%
T-3. St. Louis: 43-45, 1.1%
5. Pittsburgh: 32-54, 0.0%
Wade Miley vs. Eric Lauer in Milwaukee tonight.
Up Next:
The Cardinals
***
Whom:
Cubs vs. St. Louis
When:
1:20 PM Chicago Time
Where:
Wrigley Field
Weather:
Temperature around seventy degrees, wind blowing in from right at a little more than five miles per hour.
Starting Pitchers:
Kyle Hendricks vs. Wade LeBlanc
The Opponent:
No new injuries of note for the Cardinals, but it’s worth noting that all four of Jack Flaherty, Dakota Hudson, Carlos Martínez, and Miles Mikolas are on the 60-day IL. Goodness. They optioned Johan Oviedo to AAA, so they only have three starters rostered this weekend, and presumably next weekend as well. What a world.
As far as LeBlanc goes:
LeBlanc has been in the league on and off since 2008, making 123 career starts, 129 career relief appearances, and throwing just over 900 innings. He’s been a bit lucky in his 23 innings of work this year, turning in a 4.24 ERA to go with a 5.27 FIP and a 5.44 xERA, but his overall projections are probably more accurate, and those are for a 4.54 ERA and 4.85 FIP, per FanGraphs’s depth charts.
The Numbers:
The Cubs are -150 favorites, the Cardinals are +140 underdogs, that works out to about a 58% win probability for the Cubs. The over/under’s at eight.
Cubs News:
Ryan Tepera’s back, and the Cubs have recalled Kyle Ryan. Cory Abbott’s going down to Iowa, and Brad Wieck is on the IL with the return of an irregular heartbeat issue.
Justin Steele has been activated and optioned to Iowa to stretch out as a starting pitcher, and with Zach Davies (like Kyle Hendricks, conceivably) a potential trade deadline mover, the rotation come August could well be something like: Hendricks/Alzolay/Mills/Steele/Williams, which also might not be a terrible 2022 rotation, or 2023 minus Williams (though that puts a lot of pressure on those middle three names and requires Williams to be serviceable).
Javy Báez is a late addition to today’s lineup, which is good news for all sorts of reasons.
Cubs Thoughts:
There’s probably a movie to be made about a group of ballplayers who hit the highest of highs but never fully panned out into the greats they were supposed to be playing one last series against their rivals before parting ways. If this were that movie, you’d focus on Báez, Anthony Rizzo, and Kris Bryant. The Cubs would lose a dud today. They’d fight back tomorrow with some grit from Rizzo and a flashy piece of heroics from Báez. Then on Sunday, down two in the ninth, they’d get a few guys on and send Bryant up to pinch hit, at which point he would of course go deep and we’d find out in cuts as he rounded the bases that he’d been told before the game that he’d be on his way to Oakland come Wednesday when the All-Star Game was over.
I think I might cry.
