1. Another top-of-the-league sweep.
The Cubs, as you may have read in 100 other places, are 9-0 now against the Dodgers, Padres, and Mets, who are the three best teams in the National League on paper. How good does that make the Cubs?
Well, even just judging by win percentage, the Cubs are fourth in the NL, trailing the NL West trio of those two mentioned above plus the Giants. In run differential, the story’s the same (only those four and the Mets have positive run differentials after the Cardinals’ disaster last night, which we’ll get to later). The Cubs have the third-best wRC+ in the NL, and while that’s paired with only the ninth-best FIP, ninth-best is better than many expected, with the bullpen second in the majors in fWAR (trailing only the Mets).
On paper looking forward, the story’s still different. FanGraphs has the Cubs as a below-.500 roster, held back mainly by starting pitching, though it does currently project them to finish with 85.2 wins, just 0.3 behind the Brewers and 2.5 ahead of the Cardinals.
The nice thing about that, of course, is that it can change. The Cubs can acquire starting pitching.
The scary thing, though, is that it can change. As we’ve been reminded plenty already this year, rosters don’t always work as planned.
2. Guys got a day off.
Kris Bryant, Willson Contreras, and the Ryan Tepera/Andrew Chafin/Craig Kimbrel trio all got a day of rest, and the Cubs won anyway. We’ve talked before about how sweeps are game-changers in terms of a season’s scope, especially because in these posts we look forward through the lens of series wins and series losses. We said entering the week that a good goal for the Cubs was to go 9-9 against the Padres, Dodgers, Mets, and Giants between May 31st and June 30th, something we paired with an aspirational 7-4 against St. Louis, Miami, Cleveland, and Milwaukee to get our 45-36 target. The Cubs have won the first three, which means to finish the month at that 90-win pace could now mean going 7-8 and 6-5 against those sets of teams. Basically, they can lose one more series than we expected.
3. Javy Báez isn’t striking out as much.
At points in April, Báez’s strikeout rate was near 50%. It’s now down to 36.6%. That’s still the second-highest among Major League Baseball’s 143 qualified hitters, but Báez’s 14 home runs have him up to a 117 wRC+ and 1.5 fWAR, which are above most expectations for the shortstop. Does baseball need more balls in play? Sure. But that’s not Javy Báez’s problem, and the fears that there really was a Javy Báez problem back when he was striking out all over the place have been assuaged.
4. Anthony Rizzo with the big hit.
And he loved it. I’d like to see some attempt to quantify fun/fire on a team-by-team basis, even if it’s just counting on-base celebrations. I wonder if it’s a leading or lagging indicator of winning, or if there’s any correlation there at all. It would have to be at least as measurable as defensive stats, right?
5. Now it gets harder.
Now, the Cubs go to the West Coast for a week, playing four in San Francisco before three in San Diego against a probably pissed-off Padres team that’s reportedly expecting Fernando Tatís Jr. to avoid missing more time. Meanwhile, the Brewers get to host the Diamondbacks for four while the Cardinals play four against the Reds, also at home, and then the Brewers go to Cincinnati and the Cardinals host Cleveland. We aren’t quite into standings-watching season, but the Cubs’ place in the standings does matter for buying/selling considerations, so it would be nice if that place could remain first.
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Around the Division:
Carlos Martínez allowed ten earned runs in the first inning last night in Los Angeles while recording only two outs. Jake Woodford came in and got an out but also allowed another run. The Cardinals lost, 14-3. Long flight home. The Brewers were off, the Reds were rained out, Lorenzo Cain went on the injured list with a strained hamstring, and somebody will have to win the NL Central so please do remember that if your name is Jed Hoyer or Tom Ricketts and you are reading this.
Standings, FanGraphs division championship probabilities:
1. Cubs: 32-23, 36.7%
2. St. Louis: 31-25, 19.8%
3. Milwaukee; 29-26, 38.4%
4. Cincinnati: 24-29, 5.0%
5. Pittsburgh: 20-34, 0.0%
36.7% and 38.4% are two numbers that are, practically speaking, indecipherably close to one another, but we’ll hold off on labeling the Cubs as division favorites until they actually are division favorites, something that’s hopefully on its way.
Brett Anderson opposes Jon Duplantier in Milwaukee. Adam Wainwright faces Vladimir Gutierrez in St. Louis.
Up Next:
The first of four next to the Bay.
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Whom:
Cubs vs. San Francisco
When:
8:45 PM Chicago Time
Where:
Oracle Park (I’m sad to say I now think of it more as AT&T Park than Pac Bell Park, and I’m also sad to say I’m getting a little nostalgic about specific telecommunications provider sponsorships of baseball fields)
Weather:
Temperatures around 60 degrees and falling into the high 50’s during the game, with the wind howling out in San Francisco but it almost always does that and the park’s still a pitcher’s park. Wonder if it gets some shelter thanks to the hills. Or if it’s just that big.
Starting Pitchers:
Zach Davies vs. Anthony DeSclafani
The Opponent:
DeSclafani is having the best year of his career, and he was solid before last year in Cincinnati. Through eleven starts and more than sixty innings of work, he’s got a 3.56 ERA, a 3.42 xERA, and a 3.84 FIP. He’s been a key cog for the Giants, and the Giants have been among the season’s more fun surprises.
It’s weird to say this about a team that won three titles in a five-year span within the last dozen years, but I think the Giants are well-run. One would imagine that to be the case, given the whole winning-the-World-Series-regularly thing, but each time it felt, at least to me, rather unexpected. The last two of those teams were in the bottom third of the league in pitcher fWAR. They had guys like Cody Ross and Marco Scutaro helping lead them. There was always a “How are they doing this?” element to things, but also, that was in that era right before so many teams started getting so good—the era when the Yankees were scuffling and the Dodgers were scuffling and the Red Sox were yo-yoing and the Astros and Cubs were tanking and we ended up seeing the Kansas City Royals in two straight World Series. After 2015, baseball’s dynamics changed a bit, or at least it feels that way to my recollection. If the mid-2000’s were when the A’s taught everyone how to build a good team for a season, the front half of the 2010’s was when a lot of teams who’d figured out how to build a good team for a multi-year stretch were laying the groundwork, and it created openings for, well, mostly the Giants. Before 2015, the Giants were among baseball’s best teams, but in hindsight, they feel like a team that would win 82 games in 2021. I cannot back that up with numbers. Just an impression.
Anyway, the Giants have the best record in baseball right now, they’re leading the Padres and Dodgers by a game and a game and a half, respectively, and maybe they’ll keep it going and make it four titles in twelve years while Dodgers fans punch holes in walls and do that how-do-they-keep-getting-away-with-this thing from Breaking Bad. They’re also ridiculously banged up, but Buster Posey’s crushing the ball, someone named Steven Duggar is crushing the ball, Brandon Crawford is having a career year at 34, Evan Longoria is back to his mid-20’s numbers at 35, and the San Francisco rotation has been the most productive in baseball even though it currently consists of Kevin Gausman, DeSclafani, Johnny Cueto, Alex Wood, and Logan Webb, all of whom are either castoffs or would have been castoffs within the last two or three years had the Giants not retained them or gobbled them up.
They’re hurt. They’ve been hurt all year. Their backup catcher right now is a guy named Chadwick Tromp. They have seven guys on the 60-day IL, including Tommy La Stella. Brandon Belt, Curt Casali, and a man named Darin Ruf who was crushing the baseball are among five on the 10-day IL. Longoria is day-to-day with an intercostal strain. Mike Yastrzemski had to have his thumb x-rayed after Tuesday’s game (it was negative). This could dramatically fall apart, but it also might somehow work, because these are the San Francisco Giants and they really seem to often find a way.
Long way of saying they have solid starting pitching and mediocrity, on paper, elsewhere, making them the inverse of the Cubs and something of the Cubs’ equal.
The Numbers:
The Cubs are +116 underdogs, with the Giants at -126, so about a 45% chance of a win. Over/under’s at 8½ and leans towards the under.
Cubs News:
Jason Heyward and Jake Marisnick started their rehab assignment over in Omaha. Heyward walked, struck out, did something else that made an out, and made a diving catch in right. Marisnick doubled, struck out, and made another out while playing center. I won’t be giving daily recaps of their rehab performance but I looked up where the game was and in the process saw the Iowa Cubs’ recap, so here you are. Credit to the Iowa Cubs for providing the recap.
Cubs Thoughts:
A series split is almost always the reasonable four-game goal, and in this case it would require the Cardinals to sweep the Reds if they want to pass the Cubs back this weekend, something of which the odds are low. Hopefully the Cubs get a solid outing out of Davies in a park that should suit Davies rather well as a high-contact guy. I’d place Davies third among the Cubs’ starters in the confidence rankings, with the two guys behind him pitching the next two nights, so it would be nice to grab a win this evening and take some pressure off for the rest of the road trip.
