Series Preview: Chicago Cubs (9-6) at Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles (10-4)

In Series Previews by berselius97 Comments

These assholes again? Ugh. At least we only have to play once a year (plus playoffs hopefully) in this stupid ballpark, where I swear the stadium sound guy has a personal vendetta against me. I don’t know what it is that always rubs me the wrong way there. The fact that they have the most deafening sound system in the majors doesn’t hurt either.

My personal complaints aside, the Dodgers have been playing pretty sloppy to start the year but they have enough talent to paper it over so it doesn’t really matter. After the Japan series, they executed a four game sweep of the Tigers and thumped the Braves, before losing two straight east coast series to the Phillies and Nats.

Team Leaders

(Preseason ZiPS DC projections)

Cubs

  • OBP: Kyle Tucker (.355)
  • ISO: Tucker (.214)
  • HR: Tucker (29)
  • R+RBI: Tucker (185)
  • wRC+: Tucker (132)
  • BSR: PCA (3.1)
  • Defense: Swandong (19.2)
  • SP K/9: Ben Brown (9.5)
  • SP BB/9: Shota (2.09)
  • SP ERA: Steele (3.39)
  • RP K/9: Merryweather (10.43)
  • RP BB/9: Ryan Brasier (2.43)
  • RP ERA: Brasier (3.10)
  • WAR: Swandong (4.7)

Dodgers

  • OBP: Freddie Freeman (.382)
  • ISO: Shohei Ohtani (.304)
  • HR: Ohtani (43)
  • R+RBI: Ohtani (154)
  • wRC+: Ohtani (165)
  • BSR: Ohtani (4.7)
  • Defense: Tommy Edman (12.6)
  • SP K/9: Blake Snell (11.91)
  • SP BB/9: Yoshi Yamamoto (1.91)
  • SP ERA: Snell (3.38)
  • RP K/9: Alex Vesia (11.70)
  • RP BB/9: BlaQue Treinen (2.04)
  • RP ERA: Tanner Scott (3.08)
  • Odds the season will come down to needing two good innings from Joe Kelly at some point: 45%
  • WAR: Ohtani (6.3 + 1.4)

F the Dodgers, but Ohtani is pretty incredible. Really excited that my three year old nephew went to his first ever MLB game last week and got to see him play.

Who isn’t available?

Thank the maker that Blake Snell is on the IL with shoulder inflammation and the Cubs will not have to face him this week. Not because of any particular expected box score results, but because it’s so awful to watch him pitch (dying laughing). Freddie Freeman has been out with the ankle injury that bothered him in Japan and was reaggravated in a shower a week or so back, but should be back for this series. Kershaw is still out, recovering from back surgery, and will probably return mid-season. On the pitching side Ohtani is working his way back and threw a 26 pitch bullpen session last week. As usual they have like 7 other pitchers on the shelf that I won’t bother cycling through.

On the Cubs side, Miller, Brujan, and Brasier are still on the IL. Brujan recently started his rehab assignment so Gage Workman will probably be back in AAA at some point soon, the only question is whether the Cubs pony up some A ball reliever to trade to the Tigers to keep him. There’s been no word that I’ve seen on the results of Justin Steele’s elbow MRI, so I’ll go off the vibes from earlier this week and continue to expect that it will be a minimum stint. Assad is working his way back from his ST oblique injury and seems to be ramping up in AZ.

Pitching Matchups

ZiPS projected K/9, BB/9, ERA listed for each

Friday: Matt Boyd, LHP (9.21, 2.91, 3.69) vs Yoshi Yamamoto, RHP (9.36, 2.03, 3.49), 9:10 PM CT

Boyd has been a pleasant surprise in his two starts so far with the Cubs, and has exceeded my expectations greatly. Hopefully the Cubs bet on him continues to pay off, and the only question mark is how many innings he can pitch this year given the last time that he’s made more than 15 starts was 2019.

The Cubs have already seen Yamamoto this year, and he’s pretty good! He allowed just one run in five innings in the season opener. Since then he’s had a ten strikeout game against the pirates, and a six inning, 0 ER game in Philly. My main takeaway from his start against the Cubs was that…he is a pretty handsome dude? One of the Japan-native regulars in the effectively wild discord has stated that he’s probably the most popular player amongst Japanese women fans (Ohtani is his own category, of course (dying laughing)).

Saturday: Ben Brown, RHP (9.65, 3.69, 3.80) vs Roki Sasaki, RHP (10.83, 2.93, 3.61), 8:10 PM CT

A fitting matchup between two young guys who are struggling to find the zone at times. Brown struggled mightily in the first inning of his last start before getting a handle on things, then got knocked around some more as batters saw even more of him later in the outing. I was big on team Brown-in-rotation but the arrow is pointing more towards (hopefully dominant) bullpen arm at the moment. But we definitely still need a few more starts.

Sasaki has been even wilder than Brown, and has the highest walk rate in the majors amongst starting pitchers so far this year. He walked five Cubs in four innings in Japan but manage to skate away with just one run. In his next start against the Tigers he had just one more out than walks (5 vs 4). His last outing against the Phillies was better, walking just two but in only four innings and 70 pitches. Hopefully the Cubs meat grinder gets back to work and has better sequencing luck than in Tokyo.

Sunday: Jameson Taillon(?), RHP (7.22, 2.19, 4.33) vs Tyler Glasnow, RHP (11.22, 2.86, 3.50), 6:10 PM CT (ESPN)

Speaking of pitchers topping the BB/9 charts, Glasnow is #2 just behind Sasaki, with 8 walks in 7 innings on the year. Perhaps in an effort to make Roki feel better, he repeated his feat by getting just one more out than walks issued against the Phils (6 outs vs 5 walks, in this case).

The Cubs haven’t officially announced their starter for Sunday as this would normally be Steele’s spot in the order, but with the off day this would be normal rest for Taillon. Topline results wise, Taillon’s numbers are poor (6.06 ERA, 5.19 FIP) but stuff-wise I think he looks a LOT better than he did last year, when his 3.27 ERA also didn’t really match up to the eye test, but in the opposite way (dying laughing).

Go Cubs. Or don’t. I can’t tell you what to do. Unless that thing is to extend PCA and Tucker. Do that.

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  30. Author
    berselius

    To-day’s base ball squadron

    LF Happ
    RF Tucker
    DH Suzuki
    1B Busch
    SS Swanson
    3B Turner
    2B Hoerner
    CF PCA
    C Kelly

    SP Brown

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  67. Author
    berselius

    Whenever I see these Starlux airlines ads I just assume that this is a situation where your ticket comes with an in-flight blood transfusion from a teenager

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  94. Author
    berselius

    Counsell says Seiya is day-to-day (as are we all) reaggravated a minor injury from sliding earlier this week.

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