Here goes something.
Whom:
Cubs vs. Los Angeles
When:
9:10 PM Chicago Time
Where:
Chavez Ravine
Weather:
It’s Southern California. Temperatures in the high 60’s, breeze blowing out at about five miles per hour.
Starting Pitchers:
Zach Davies vs. Walker Buehler
The Opponent:
Buehler’s getting good results on the back of good performances, as has often been the case in his young career. 26 years old, Buehler’s got a career FIP of 3.29, and his 3.52 mark this year (with a 3.57 xERA alongside it) isn’t too far off. Don’t be too spooked by the 2.38 ERA, and for whatever it’s worth, the strikeouts are down a tad this season, but…yeah. Buehler, like so many Dodgers, is good. Nothing too suspicious-looking on his spin rate graph, either.
The Dodgers are still without Corey Seager, who goes out on a rehab assignment…next week? They did recently get Max Muncy and Cody Bellinger back from the IL, which is great for the Dodgers and bad for the Cubs.
The Numbers:
The Cubs are +220 underdogs against a -260 line on the Dodgers, so about a 29% chance of a win, which is among the lowest probabilities you’ll see for the Cubs this year, but probably not too out of line with their probabilities the rest of the weekend. Over/under’s at 8½.
Around the Division:
The Brewers won in Phoenix, 3-2, finishing their Mountain-ish trip 4-3, which is probably a game worse than you’d draw that trip up these days. They’re off tonight.
The Cardinals lost again to the Tigers, 6-2 this time, and in so doing fell to two games under .500. They start four games with the Pirates tonight, with Carlos Martínez going against Chad Kuhl.
The Reds had a day off. They’ll start four with Atlanta in Cincinnati tonight. Tony Santillan vs. TBD.
Standings, FanGraphs division championship probabilities:
1. Milwaukee: 42-33, 59.8%
2. Cubs: 41-33, 26.0%
3. Cincinnati: 36-36, 10.0%
4. St. Louis: 36-38, 4.2%
5. Pittsburgh: 26-46, 0.0%
It would be really hard for the Cardinals to justify buying right now, especially considering that the 4.2% number incorporates the expectations of a good weekend for them against the Pirates.
Cubs News:
I haven’t seen anything big. Hopefully we start getting some rehab assignment news soon, specifically for Nico Hoerner and ideally for Matt Duffy and David Bote as well (a deeper bench would be nice right now, even with some weapons on it already in the form of Patrick Wisdom and Jake Marisnick, or whoever not named Jason Heyward they replace in the lineup on a given day).
Cubs Thoughts
It’s the toughest series in baseball. Four games in Los Angeles against the Dodgers. A split is ambitious, and if the Cubs don’t get it but avoid the sweep, they’re far from sunk—win the Brewers series and you finish June an admirable 44-37, having gone a solid 15-14 against the toughest 29-game stretch on the slate. The risk, of course, is losing both series, or getting swept by the Dodgers, and so to that end, the Cubs could really use a solid outing from Davies tonight. Five innings, two or three runs, get enough from the bats to justify using a good bullpen piece and then hopefully give that bullpen the lead. This is asking a lot of the bullpen—we shouldn’t assume scoreless outings from them every night—but the reasonable goal every single night is a scoreless outing from the bullpen, which says a lot about how strong that unit is.
