If the City of San Francisco can survive the waking nightmare that was Fuller House, the Cubs should feel confident they can survive losing two out of three to the Milwaukee Brewers. Perhaps they can take solace in this fact as they touch down in the City by the Bay for the only time in 2016. While both offenses are suffering through somewhat prolonged slumps, it will still be a battle of first place teams this weekend when Cubs will visit the NL West-leading San Francisco Giants for three games starting Friday night. Call it the Cubs’ Manifest Destiny, or just a four hour plane ride from Milwaukee, but it’s their first West Coast trip of the season.
The Cubs will be catching a streaking Giants team, who have won eight in a row. For the most part, the Giants are doing with their pitching and not with their bats. The offense has scored just just 32 runs in the past 12 games, but the pitching has surrendered just 14 runs during the stretch.
Last season, the Cubs took five out of seven from the Giants, but both those losses came in a three game set at AT&T Park in late August. This season, on paper, the Cubs seem to have an excellent chance to take the first two games of the series. They will be running out their two best starting pitchers, while the Giants counter with two pitchers who are among the worst in the majors in 2016. It all kicks off Friday night along the banks of McCovey Cove. Let’s see how the matchups break down.
Probable Pitchers
Friday: Jake Arrieta vs. Jake Peavy
The duel the national media is not rushing to label “The Battle of the Two Jakes” features two pitchers who could not be trending in more divergent directions.
Last season, Arrieta made two starts against the Giants, holding them to a .422 OPS and just one earned run in 13 2/3 innings pitched. Not surprisingly, if you’ve paid attention to Arrieta’s usage since the second half of 2015, he went overwhelmingly to his sinker (55 percent) and slider (30 percent) in the two starts.
The Cubs offense opens with a matchup that favors Ben Zobrist, Dexter Fowler, Jason Heyward, and Anthony Rizzo, as left handed batters are hitting .379/.438/.667 against Peavy. The biggest problem for him is that he really has no pitches he can turn to with any consistency or effectiveness. He goes to his three fastballs about 75 percent of the time, with opposing batters posting astronomical slugging percentages against his fourseam (.636 ), cutter (.592), and sinker (.792)
Through Wednesday night, his 5.65 DRA is eleventh-worst among qualified starting pitchers. Peavy’s walk rates and control have remained decent, meaning he’s over the plate and batter are making him pay. It should be an tremendous opportunity for the Cubs offense to get back on track.
Saturday: Jon Lester vs. Matt Cain
Matt Cain, despite playing for the Giants since the early 1980s, is only 31 years old. While he’s still in his prime as a human being, as a baseball player, he appears to be nearing the end of the road. He’s winless in eight starts, and averaging fewer than six innings per start. His 5.16 DRA is among the 25 worst in baseball. Since the start of 2014, he owns a 1.38 WHIP , after averaging about a baserunner per inning for five seasons. Cain has lost less than two miles per hour from his fourseam fastball (his go-to pitch) from his 2007-2013 peak, but he goes to it 15 percentage points less often than he did back then. Cain, like Peavy, has struggled mightily against lefthanded batters this season, as they are hitting .354/.398/.549.
Lester has reduced his curve usage by a few percentage points from last season, but don’t be surprised if it’s key in Saturday’s start. In his only start against the Giants in 2015, he threw 20 curves, the only time after the All Star break he threw at least 20 curves. And while his usage rate has decreased slightly, batters are slugging .191 against it in 2016.
Sunday: Kyle Hendricks vs. Madison Bumgarner
The series wraps up with the best overall pitching matchup of the weekend.
Madison Bumgarner continues to do Madison Bumgarner things. His 2.97 DRA is seventh-best in the NL. Bumgarner has increased his fourseam fastball use by about five percentage points from 2015, and decreased his curve by five percentage points. This has not really affected his results. Bumgarner is on an absurd roll in May. Through four starts, batters are hitting just .198/.259/.274. During the stretch, he’s gone to his fourseamer 55 percent of the time, and batters are slugging .260 against the pitch.
Hendricks faces a challenge against patient Giants lineup (see below). He’s near the top of the NL in pitches thrown in the strike zone (about 50 percent), and the Giants lead the league in zone contact rate (about 89 percent).
What to Watch for
The Giants do not score with power. They rank between eighth and twelfth in the National League in doubles, home runs, slugging percentage, ISO, and home run to fly ball ratio. Not a single Giants batter ranks in the top 25 in the league in slugging percentage or in the top 33 in ISO. In fact, in both categories, three Cubs players are listed before a single Giants batter makes an appearance.
What they are is patient, ranking third in walk rate and fourth in on-base percentage. They do not chase bad pitches, as their 25 percent swing rate on pitches outside of the strike zone is third best in the NL. Not surprisingly, then, they own a NL-low 16 percent team strikeout rate. Leading the charge, albeit slowly and patiently, is Brandon Belt, who ranks third in the NL in both walk rate (18.7 percent) and on-base percentage (.440). Hunter Pence and Denard Span also boast walk rates of at least 12 percent.
The Giants’ recent three game sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks is fairly indicative of a team that lays off bad pitches, puts the ball in play, but does not hit for much power. In three days in the desert, Giants batters struck out in just 15 percent of all plate appearances, and scored just 12 runs on just seven extra base hits. In typical Giants fashion, though, they managed to win all three games. It will be fascinating to watch how the Cubs pitchers attack the Giants, as the staff tends to live in the strike zone. 48 percent of their pitches are in the zone, fourth best in the NL.
As for the Cubs offense, they should not feel discouraged if they cannot chase Peavy and Cain early. Despite the Giants pitching staff being on a week-long roll, their bullpen ranks middle to the bottom of the pact in the NL in WHIP, FIP, strikeout rate, and stranded rate. The Cubs should have their chances this weekend.
Broadcast Info, Game Times
Friday’s opener is on WGN at 9:15 pm. The rest of the weekend gets the national treatment. Saturday’s game is on Fox at 6:15 pm. The finale is the ESPN Sunday Night Game, putting it in primetime on Sunday night at 7 pm. All times CST.
Lead photo courtesy Jake Roth—USA Today Sports.