Series mini-preview: St. Louis Cardinals (20-11) at Chicago Cubs (12-20)

In Series Previews by berselius39 Comments

seriespreview

It's a short series, so I'll make this a short post. The Cardinals are good. The Cubs are not. 

Pitching Probables

I list ERA, FIP-, xFIP, and ZiPS FIP for each pitcher.

Tuesday: Lance Lynn, RHP (2.75, 80, 3.88, 3.71) vs Travis Wood, LHP (2.50, 91, 4.44, 4.35), 7:05 PM CT

Unsurprisingly for the Cardinals pitching staff, Lynn is a ground ball pitcher. His curveball is his best pitch, and he throws a lot of them to RHB. He had two rocky starts at Arizona and Pittsburgh, but has generally been solid this year. He was the Cards fifth starter last year, bouncing around between the rotation and the pen over the course of the season. With Lohse gone and his performance so far, he's likely going to stay there all year.

Wood's great ERA numbers are backed up by a .191 BABIP and a 6.3% HR/FB, so more runs are going to be coming his way. All six of his starts this season have been Quality Starts, and he worked into the eight inning in his last outing.

Wednesday: Jake Westbrook, RHP (1.07, 93, 4.05, 4.08) vs Carlos Villanueva, RHP (2.85, 96, 3.49, 3.97), 1:20 PM CT

Westbrook has yet to give up a HR this season, and he's also been walking a lot of batters. He hasn't had much BABIP bad luck (.286) so it looks like his run total is a combo of sequencing and a great defense. And the no homers. 

Expect a lot of sinkers. Westbrook is #3 in GB% over the last four seasons and change, and #2 in GB/FB ratio.

Villanueva on the other hand, has a great ERA number despite giving up a HR nearly every start. A lot of them have been solo shots, due to a stellar walk rate and a .210 BABIP.

Share this Post

Comments

  2. Suburban kid

    I was just talking Cubs baseball with my dad, who really hates Marmol and seems to think if they got rid of him they might have a chance to win a few more games. Anyway, my dad told me he went to an event at a senior center where Tom Ricketts gave a talk. At the Q&A, he got up and said “I might be one of the only people left who saw the Cubs in the World Series. And it seems to me that ever since then, the Cubs have never had what you would call a top flight pitching staff. Clearly there is correlation between pitching and winning – so why don’t the Cubs ever do something about that?”

    Kind of a meatball question, even if valid, and Ricketts argued that in 2003 the Cubs did have a top flight pitching staff — which pissed off my dad because he didn’t think one year was worth mentioning, and that it wasn’t exactly 1990s Braves level.

    But what was funny was after the Q&A, some guy came up to my dad and said “hey, I saw the Cubs in the 19*35* World Series” with all the “so there, sonny boy” manner you might imagine.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  13. dmick89

    Meanwhile, Conway looked uncomfortable from his very first pitch, continually pawing at his landing spot and scraping mud out of his spikes after every single pitch. A member of the grounds crew was eventually located after the end of the 1st inning (today is Saturday, so there was just a “skeleton crew” on duty), and while he raked up the mud clods, nothing was done to dry up the mud itself or stamp-down the mound. On his second pitch in the bottom of the 2nd inning, Conway’s spikes got caught in the mud and he tripped and threw a pitch awkwardly, about six feet over the head of the Brew Crew batter. A loud pop could be heard when he let go of the pitch, and his arm recoiled as if he had been shot. He was obviously in tremendous pain, and he ran up the 1st base line into foul territory before coming to a stop and going to one knee.

    Only after Conway left the game did two other members of the Maryvale grounds crew arrive and completely manicure the mound to make it safe for the pitchers.

    Conway was immediately driven back to Fitch Park in the Cubs utility van, and presumably he will be examined next week.

    Conway was the Cubs 4th round draft pick last season out of Coastal Carolina University, and he was considered a pre-draft 1st or 2nd round talent who fell to the 4th round only because he had elbow UCL reconstruction (Tommy John Surgery) prior to the June draft. But after nearly making the Kane County starting rotation out of Minor League Camp, Conway has been the most-impressive Cubs pitcher so far at Extended Spring Training, and after throwing five solid innigs and 80 pitches in his previous start last Monday, he appeared to be on the verge of getting a promotion to Kane County or possibly Daytona.

    http://www.thecubreporter.com/05042013/cubs-beat-brewers-apparently-lose-conway

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  16. dmick89

    @ josh:
    Yeah, it didn’t look as though it hit the area that I thought it did, but I have no interest in watching a slow motion replay of that. I’d rather shave my head with a power saw.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  17. dmick89

    Len keeps showing the team run expectancy based on how frequently the team has scored so far this year. That’s not how it’s done. If the Cardinals have a better offense than average, their RE would be slightly better than average, but nowhere near where it’s been so far for the Cardinals.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0
  19. dmick89

    @ josh:
    There wasn’t in the video, but I’m sure one was or will be played. That was just awful. I don’t even want to watch it at full speed again.

      Quote  Reply

    0

    0

Leave a Comment