The Cubs play a 3 game series against the Rangers starting tonight at 6:40pm Central Standard Time.
This blog will look ahead at some of the bigger story lines while setting the stage for our emotions through 12 games.
For a meat and potatoes about the weekend against the Padres, let me first direct you to today’s Monday Morning Cubs Show
We talk about the Kyle Tucker implications from Vlad Juniors deal. And we talk a lot about Ben Brown and the pitching staff and our overall expectations.
For now let’s stay focused just on the Rangers series beginning with out starting pitching:
- Justin Steele vs. Nathan Eovaldi
- Jameson Taillon vs. Patrick Corbin
- Shota Imanaga vs. Trevor Mahle
Right off the bat there’s a clear advantage to the Cubs in games 2 and 3. That’s obvious with how good Taillon and Shota have been compared to Corbin and Trevor Mahle.
And that advantage is even bigger with shitty weather because the Cubs have a little bit more experience in it this year and are generally more equipped for less offense.
More important is the matchup tonight with Steele vs. Eovaldi.
We know Steele is solid but we haven’t seen his best yet. It’s been below his standards for average and that makes me super optimistic about tonight. The fact the Cubs are 2-0 in his two domestic starts is really positive. Just imagine when he gets clicking.
On the other side of that is Nathan Eovaldi fresh off a complete game shutout in his last start needing just 99 pitches to blank the Cincinnati Reds on the road.
Both of these guys are legitimate psychopaths that would rather cut off a finger than be responsible for losing one regular season game.
And neither will give a flying fuck that it’s approximately 26 degree wind chill tonight at Wrigley Field. I expect both of them to use the elements to their advantage and pitch a fast game with minimal scoring.
Some other observations about the series going into tonight:
- The Rangers carry a low average but a high slug relatively speaking. That makes for a lot of strikeouts and weak contact if you can command two pitches in the strike zone. They’re gonna hammer mistakes but if you limit mistakes, they’ll look stupid at the end of the day. So for these reasons, I give a slight edge to the Cubs pitching over the Rangers hitting even if they have a bunch of massive donkeys
- Donkeys are baseball players that hit the ball very far and the Rangers have a lot of them
- Jake Burger
- Marcus Semien
- Wyatt Langford
- Corey Seager
- Adolis Garcia
- Joc Pederson
- The Cubs bullpen hasn’t exploded as much as they’ve just been kinda poopy because they have such weak swing and miss. Ryan Pressly looks like a terrible closer this far and there’s only so much you can ignore in the sake of Maintaining Faith. That’s why I’d like to see an immediate upgrade either in free agency with David Robertson or later in a trade when it’s more obvious to leadership that Pressly was a bad move. Whenever that happens, the Cubs should be theoretically in a better position.
- The lineup is out:
- I’ll preview closer to first pitch but just want to emphasize that you’re looking at the first notable change in a lineup this season:
- Amaya up to 6 after a light weekend
- Jon Berti in for Nico at 2nd base and hitting 8th
- Gage Workman with his 2nd start of the season after coming to the Cubs in the Rule 5 draft from Detroit
- Workman is a plus defender with big offensive potential but no real opportunities with the Cubs unless someone gets hurt. It’s hard to say how good he can be
- Otherwise we’re looking at an identical 1-5 and that’s really important to me. You want to give your veterans predictability for their routines
- Our 1-5 is nowhere near the Dodgers but I think it’s good enough to win 90+ games provided the 6-9 doesn’t change too much over the season
- I hate sitting Nico after playing so well against the Padres
- I hate sitting players with an off day this week on Thursday after traveling on Wednesday afternoon
- However – I like getting Berti and Workman reps after sitting on the bench so long. It’s more important that they get early reps and Counsell is picking his spot game 1 of the series which I think is better than game 2 or 3
- This is the most excited I’ve been to watch Justin Steele pitch since he came back off the IL last year and we needed him so bad. This is right up there because he’s been below average his first 3 starts and he’s literally never been cheeks 4 times in a row. So don’t be shocked if he goes shoving today.
- Lastly – I’m still out on Counsell and have no idea what to do. If ever there was a time for me to get some help from Cubs fans, it’s on this topic. WHERE DO WE STAND ON CRAIG COUNSELL?
- Go Cubs
- Go Mahoney Weather Report
3. Go Monday Morning Cubs Show