After a three-game sweep of the Pirates in their first meeting of the year, the Cubs again face the Bucs starting today, this time at home. They’re coming off a Padres series that ended with a not only the first consecutive losses of the year, but two losses in the same day. The day off yesterday was probably helpful for everyone to reset and prep for the divisional rivals, if not quite as much fun for fans of the team.
Probables
The Cubs will send out the same three starters as the prior series, while the Pirates will upgrade somewhat from their Gerrit Cole-Jon Niese-Juan Nicasio trio that was unable to stifle the Cubs bats. The opener will feature Jason Hammel going up against Francisco Liriano, who’s coming off a strong performance against the Cardinals: seven innings, two walks, 10 strikeouts, and two runs. Liriano is one of the many Ray Searage success stories; he pounds fastballs inside to both righties and lefties, and gets lots of ground balls as a result (56.8 percent GB rate, eighth-highest among pitchers with at least 30 innings) which are then gobbled up by the Pirates’ frequently shifted infield (or at least that’s the plan). His stuff is good enough to get swings and misses (20th-lowest contact rate), so he runs pretty good strikeout rates as well. When Liriano runs into trouble, it’s usually a result of shoddy control; he has the fourth-lowest swing rate and the lowest zone rate, which can result in a lot of walks if he’s not hitting his spots perfectly. After giving up 17 walks in his first 21 1/3 innings, Liriano has only given up two in his last 13 2/3, but this is a Cubs team that can work a starter over–they have the highest walk rate by a huge margin and the second-lowest rate of swings at pitches out of the zone.
Game two will see Cubs ace Jake Arrieta take the bump, and face off against Jeff Locke, who’s in his fourth season as a mainstay in the back half of the Pirates rotation. Pittsburgh definitely has a type–Locke, like Liriano, runs a very high ground ball rate (59.6 percent, fourth-highest), but unlike him, strikes out barely anybody, and thus lives and dies by his ability to control the quality of contact made against him. So far this season, it’s mostly been the latter: his 4.68 ERA looks bad, until you compare it to his 6.13 DRA, in which case it looks downright fantastic. That gap would seem to indicate Locke is getting a lot of help from his defense (and probably a lot of luck); if that goes away anytime soon, he probably stands to get shelled. Arrieta is probably a known quantity to you at this point, but his last start was a bit perplexing, if not quite worrisome, lasting only five innings and coming with four walks (and, to be fair, seven strikeouts). While the results haven’t shown it yet–his 1.13 ERA is even better than last year’s–Arrieta just hasn’t looked quite as sharp. His strikeouts are down and his walks are up, and I’ve been watching each of his starts with a bit of nervous anticipation, waiting for the storm to break and for him to give up more than three earned runs for the first time since last June. It’s also possible the combination of his skills and the excellent Cubs defense behind him mean that he will run a low ERA, even when the peripherals aren’t quite there.
The final game on Sunday will feature Jon Lester going up against Gerrit Cole. Cole is the only pitcher who the Cubs both saw last series and will see this series, and they beat up on the young ace the last go-round, knocking him out with five earned runs through 4 2/3 innings. Cole hasn’t traditionally racked up the strikeouts, but combined them with excellent control and very limited walks; his 2015 K/BB ratio was 13th-best among qualified starters. His 2016 walk rate looks substantially worse than normal (8.5 percent, compared to 5.3 perce3nt last year), but a lot of that can be traced back to his single start against the Cubs. If you remove that from the calculation, his walk rate falls to 6.8 percent, still higher than his career figure but a lot closer. It’ll be interesting to see if the Cubs can get him off his game again. Jon Lester has quietly been doing his thing all season, averaging 6 2/3 innings per start and never giving up more than three runs. He’s gotten into some hot water–last start’s bases-loaded-no-outs jam was terrifying, and his wriggling out was electrifying and probably been yet another beneficiary of the excellent defense behind him, but so far, he’s been everything the Cubs could’ve hoped for, and a big part of this season’s incredible early success.
What to Watch For
Miguel Montero is two games into his rehab assignment, and my colleague Matt Trueblood speculated on Monday that he might be activated by the end of the Padres series. That didn’t happen, obviously, but he’s probably due to return to the lineup soon. He’ll be a welcome sight, whenever he returns; Tim Federowicz is running a TAv of .206, and has been the sixth-worst framer on a rate basis leaguewide.
The Pirates also roll into town with the only outfield that can challenge the Cubs for the title of the best in baseball. It’s headed up by friendly superstar Andrew McCutchen, who Cubs fans are very familiar with at this point in his career. He’s off to a start slightly below his normal, lofty standards, but the guys flanking him, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco, have done more than enough to pick up the slack. Marte has long deserved more credit than he’s received, probably because he’s a corner outfielder who provides a lot of his value through defense and baserunning and who plays next to a genuine star in McCutchen. This season, however, Marte’s taken his hitting (already quite good) to another level, with a .318 TAv that would represent a career best over a full season.
Unfortunately, he has yet another teammate in the outfield competing for attention this year, as Polanco is finally capitalizing on the promise he showed in the minors, peaking at his rating as the 24th-best prospect in 2014. In 2016, he’s unlocked his ability to hit for power, with his .200 ISO a huge improvement on his .120 in his first two years in the league. If anything, his results might be worse than his process thus far; based on BP’s new Statcast leaderboard, Polanco is one of the players with the largest gaps between his actual production and his expected production (based on how hard and at what trajectory he’s been hitting baseballs). Unlike many of the guys around him on that list, Polanco isn’t a lumbering slugger, but the kind of speedy player who you would expect to outstrip his expected production, if anything. This trio will be a fun one to watch play together for the next several years, even if the enjoyment is somewhat muted for Cubs fans. Finally, Jung-Ho Kang has returned to the Pirates lineup, giving them a big boost over David Freese. The third baseman/shortstop has torn the cover off the ball in his five games back, and in hindsight, his signing looks like a smart move by the Pirates.
The Cubs have encountered their first instance of “adversity,” if you can call two losses in a row that with a straight face. Series against division rivals always matter doubly; you could argue that this one matters even more, in that the Cubs are looking to show their ability to shrug off a disheartening day. It’s not like this is a make-or-break series, or anything even close to that. BP’s playoff odds give the Cubs a 93.3 percent chance of winning the division; the next-highest team in any division is the Mariners, at 66.9 percent. They’ve got a lot of margin for error, is the takeaway. But the Cubs are going to see the Pirates a lot this season, and it would be great for them to continue what they started last week with another strong showing.
Broadcast Info
Today’s game one will kick off at 1:20 pm CT, and will be broadcast on WGN. Game two, on Saturday, will once again kick off at 1:20 pm, and will be broadcast on ABC 7. Sunday’s game three will round out the matched trio, beginning at 1:20 pm, and will be broadcast on CSN.
Lead photo courtesy David Kohl—USA Today Sports.