Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (7-5) at Seattle Mariners (5-8)

In Series Previews by berselius243 Comments

The Cubs west coast trip continues with a trip to Seattle. The Mariners are yet another team that’s in the mix for a playoff spot this year, which says less about the Cubs relative scheduling than it does about the relative strength of the league, where there are only four, maybe five truly awful teams, and none of them are in the NL Central.

The Mariners have yet to win a series this year, and are coming off a 2-4 great lakes road trip to MIL and TOR. Hopefully the Cubs bring a little of that Lake Michigan Devil Magic along with them to the Northwest. Their pitching comes in at about league average, but their offense has struggled, posting a .207/.276/.344 line. Only the A’s and Marlins trail them in position player fWAR on the season.

In Cubs transaction news, it is indeed Keegan Thompson who is coming up for Cuas, who was optioned to Iowa earlier today. I’d sure love to see 2022 Keegan again, but I guess we’ll have to take a wait and see approach.

Team Leaders

Based on projected numbers

Mariners

  • OBP: JP Crawford (.348)
  • ISO: Big Dumper (.227)
  • HR: Julio (32)
  • R+RBI: Julio (204)
  • wRC+: Julio (128)
  • BSR: Julio (1.8)
  • Defense: Dumper (10.4)
  • SP K/9: Luis Castillo (no not that one) (9.55)
  • SP BB/9: George Kirby (1.45)
  • SP FIP: Castillo (3.27)
  • RP K/9: Andres Muñoz (13.65)
  • RP BB/9: Gabe Speier (2.05)
  • RP FIP: Muñoz (2.88)
  • WAR: Julio (5.4)

Cubs

  • OBP: Seiya (.352)
  • ISO: Morel (.224)
  • HR: Morel (25)
  • R+RBI: Belli (178)
  • wRC+: Seiya (124)
  • BSR: Hoerner (2.6)
  • Defense: Swanson (18.0)
  • SP K/9: Shota (9.59)
  • SP BB/9: Cyle (2.17)
  • SP FIP: Shota (3.55)
  • RP K/9: Merryweather (11.90)
  • RP BB/9: Alzolay (2.41)
  • RP FIP: Merryweather (3.84)
  • WAR: Swanson (4.4)

Who isn’t available?

Jameson Taillon is making his way back from his spring training injury, and will likely be making a start in Iowa soon. He should be back by the end of the month, hopefully. Justin Steele is throwing off of flat ground and will likely be back next month. Key bullpen piece Julian Merryweather is on the 15 day IL with a rib stress fracture, which seems no fun. No TBD yet, hopefully it’s not as bad as the weird rib cartilage thing that Stroman had last year. Patrick Wisdom is coming back from his preseason back strain and is blowing up Iowa, and could be back very soon.

For the moules marineres, RP Matt Brash is on the IL with an elbow injury, but he seems to be one of the few pitchers of late who was judged to not need surgery. The Mariners have a bunch of other guys whose names aren’t ringing bells so I’m going to go YOLO and assume none of them are super impactful (dying laughing).

Pitching Matchups

Projected K/9, BB/9, ERA listed for each

Friday: Jordan Wicks, LHP (7.95, 3.22, 4.34) vs Bryce Miller, RHP (7.98, 2.21, 3.97), 8:40 PM CT (Apple TV+)

A misclick while looking up this info makes me hope that we get a Jordan Wicks/Jordan Hicks matchup when the Cubs eventually face off with the Giants.

Miller is coming off of seven shutout innings of the Brewers offense. He has an A+ fastball.

Saturday: Shota Imanaga, LHP (9.74, 2.52, 3.50) vs Emerson Hancock, RHP (6.89, 3.22, 4.66), 8:40 PM CT

Shota has been nails so far, and I look forward to seeing him pitch deeper into a start. This will be his first one away from a chilly Wrigley Field.

Hancock is a command guy, and he hasn’t shown much of it in his first two starts. He gave up 11 runs in 8.2 innings against the Beers and Statuary.

Sunday: Javier Assad?, RHP (7.40, 3.55, 4.34) vs Luis Castillo, RHP (9.52, 2.61, 3.34), 3:10 PM CT

If the Cubs stick to the same order this will probably be Assad’s start, but they haven’t announced anything yet. Assad was roughed up late in his last start as Counsell tried to extend him and save his gassed bullpen, but it eventually led to a disaster of an inning in San Diego.

We know Castillo (not that one!) from his time with the Reds, and with Cole on the shelf he has a good chance of going neck and neck with fellow ex-NL-Central-er Corbin Burnes for the AL CYA.

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Comments

  2. Perkins

    2022 Keegan Thompson would be a massive boon to this team. Especially with a rotation presently loaded with five inning starters.

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  3. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s base ball squadron

    LF Happ
    RF Seiya
    CF Belli
    3B Morel
    SS Swanson
    1B Busch
    2B Hoerner
    DH Tauchman
    C Gomes

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  7. Author
    berselius

    andcounting,

    It’s one of the few I don’t have. I picked up a roku stick thing to get mlb.tv on my tv since they absurdly don’t support the ps4 app anymore, guess I have to wait another day (dying laughing)

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  8. Author
    berselius

    Northshore Adult Diapers is missing out on a big opportunity to use Cal Raleigh as their spokesman

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  13. andcounting

    Really can’t overstate how nice it is to see baseball without the constant score/meaningless-attempt-at-news chyron scrolling incessantly across the screen.

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  15. Perkins

    Rice Cube:
    Wicks getting knocked around in another inefficient start, gotta figure out some of this command stuff, kid

    Pat and Ron kept coming back to it – in that park against that team with half its lineup hitting below the Mendoza line, he has to be on the attack and trust his stuff.

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  17. andcounting

    Apropos of nothing I choose this moment to randomly complain about the phrase, small sample size. I think it’s OK so just call it a small sample. Unless you’re in some context where one sample is of really small things, and the other sample is of giants, I think we all know that it’s the size of the sample we are referring to when we say small.

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  22. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s base ball squadron

    LF Happ
    RF Suzuki
    CF Bellinger
    3B Morel
    SS Swanson
    1B Busch
    2B Hoerner
    DH Tauchman
    C Amaya

    SP Imanaga

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  78. andcounting

    I don’t think Hector should be allowed to celebrate in that manner. He should have to sneak sheepishly into the dugout and run straight to the clubhouse without dinner.

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  84. Author
    berselius

    Love how Counsell perpetually looks like he’s housing a container of Tums every inning (dying laughing)

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  92. Author
    berselius

    mlb radio has a bunch of in house ads with classic radio calls and the mix is pretty weird. You get some iconic ones like The Giants Win The Pennant, etc, but there’s also the recent Royals world series win, which is delivered with all the excitement of picking up the team’s 65th win in September (dying laughing).

    They also have a clip of Rajai Davis’s HR in the 2016 World Series, which is definitely a volatile choice (dying laughing).

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  101. Rice Cube

    Fun Busch fact:

    That performance was made more notable by the fact that it was the fourth consecutive game in which Busch homered. That puts the rookie just one long ball shy of matching the club’s franchise record for consecutive games with at least one home run, a record that MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian relays is jointly held by Busch’s teammate Christopher Morel as well as franchise legends Sammy Sosa, Ryne Sandberg, and Hack Wilson. Busch will attempt to match that quartet in tonight’s game against the Diamondbacks, where the Cubs will take on right-hander Merrill Kelly in Phoenix at 6:40pm local time.

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  103. BVS

    berselius,

    Defensive replacement for Morel on Sat. PH for Mastrobuoni in 8th on Wed.

    Both he and Happ were nursing injuries at end of spring. My guess is one of those two. Or send down Mastrobuoni because he’s not getting playing time either.

    Interesting that it isn’t Wisdom coming up, but I’m fine that.

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  105. andcounting

    BVS,

    I’m wondering if it’s outfield specific and if it turns out to be a short-term thing because of something like paternity or bereavement leave.

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  106. Rice Cube

    The theory right now is that since Seiya might have tweaked something running to 1B late in the game that it’s something for that, which would obviously suck.

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  111. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s base ball squadron

    LF Happ
    SS Swanson
    CF Belli
    3B Morel
    1B Busch
    DH Cooper
    2B Hoerner
    RF Tauchman
    C Amaya

    SP Brown

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  118. Perkins

    Why do the Cubs’ road unis for Jackie Robinson Day just have plain blue numbering without the red and white? It’s like they’re aggressively trying to make shitty jerseys even worse.

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  145. Rice Cube

    Underrated part of this is how they forced AZ (which was probably stupid because it wasn’t close) to burn a Hail Mary challenge that they couldn’t use later to review the CS in the bottom of the inning that negated their runner in scoring position, which I thought was strange because I thought crew reviews were kind of complimentary that late in the game but whatever

    https://www.mlb.com/cubs/video/nico-hoerner-scores-confirmed-by-replay?t=t112-default-vtp

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  160. Perkins

    As much as saying it hurts, I’m not sure how they can keep sending Kyle Hendricks out there every fifth day.

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  186. BVS

    Catching up in comments instead of watching ads…That bird ad with Randy Johnson is hilarious IYKYK-ness.

    Also you were discussing a rubber match earlier. How do strike a rubber match?

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  205. Author
    berselius

    From 10,000 feet, going either 5-4 or 4-5 on a west coast road trip feels like a success, or at least, not awful. But that game was ass (dying laughing).

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  206. Author
    berselius

    Good lord, watching the video highlights of last night’s game and those dbacks uniforms might be the ugliest I have ever seen. Even worse than their tampon pantleg unis from a couple of years ago.

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  208. Rice Cube

    I don’t think we can lay blame on Counsell as the players have to execute at some point, but his magical reputation has suffered in the early going (dying laughing)

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  210. Perkins

    berselius:
    Good lord, watching the video highlights of last night’s game and those dbacks uniforms might be the ugliest I have ever seen. Even worse than their tampon pantleg unis from a couple of years ago.

    Maybe the color wasn’t coming in properly on my screen, but I didn’t hate the Dbags’ unis. As City Connect jerseys go, they seem one of the less objectionable, but I think only Washington’s, Seattle’s, and Houston’s can be considered good.

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  216. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s get away day base ball squadron

    DH Happ
    SS Swanson
    CF Bellinger
    3B Morel
    1B Busch
    2B Hoerner
    RF Tauchman
    C Gomes
    LF Mastrobuoni

    SP Wicks

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  230. Author
    berselius

    Rice Cube,

    I was working under the assumption that their bullpen is what it was yesterday, it makes a lot more sense with fresh arms available.

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  238. andcounting

    I don’t think we should reduce the Counsell effect to “makes better in-game decisions and doesn’t bunt.” Lineup construction, rest, developing players, overall leadership are all big factors. Establishing a good bullpen system is going to take awhile, so I’m not worried about that at all in the short term. The main observation I have so far is the guys we want to see make progress are doing that, the approach at the plate seems really solid, and the team is winning despite a really tough schedule so far. I’m pretty pleased.

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  239. Perkins

    I’ll take a 5-4 west coast trip against tough opponents, especially missing their ace, a key setup man, and one of their best bats. I think this team will significantly outplay its Pythagorean by season’s end.

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