NEWSLETTER
The Cardinals beat the Reds earlier today, and the Brewers aren’t playing, which means it’ll be up to the Cubs to bring their magic number down to 14 by the end of the night.
On top of that, a Cubs win would be particularly useful, because it would guarantee that the nightmare scenario this weekend would only be a three-way, first-place tie at the top of the division, as opposed to the Cubs finding themselves in second place. But let’s table this discussion until tomorrow and instead focus on tonight.
We already covered tonight’s Cubs starter, Jen-Ho Tseng, earlier today, so be sure to check out that piece for almost everything you need to know about the Cubs young righty. Hopefully, with Taylor Davis behind the plate, Tseng picks up right where he left off in Triple-A Iowa (where his performance this season was enough to be crowned the Cubs Minor League Pitcher of the Year).
Starting opposite Tseng is Mets righty Seth Lugo. Lugo, 27, is in just his second Major League season and has made 15 starts (plus one relief appearance) for the Mets this summer. He hasn’t had a ton of success this year (4.64 ERA), but his 4.01 FIP is a lot better than his actual results.
But even with that said, his 42.2% ground ball rate and 35.4% hard-hit rate don’t inspire a ton of confidence. To be fair, he doesn’t walk many batters (6.4%) and he’s had some bad luck with sequencing (69.2 LOB%) and BABIP (.322), but he doesn’t strike a ton of guys out (18.6 K%) and he’s fairly easy to hit (.278 AVG).
It’s hard to say who has the advantage in this one, but hopefully information on Tseng travels slowly and the Cubs righty can give his team 4-5 quality innings in his debut.
Let’s go.
Game Info
Chicago Cubs (79-66) at New York Mets (63-82)Â – 7:05 CT on ABC-7, 670 The Score
Game Thread and Series Preview
Your game thread is down in the comments, so let’s have some good, clean (safe-for-work) fun today.
Starting Pitchers
Cubs: Jen-Ho Tseng (R): 1.80 ERA, 4.25 FIP, 4.13 xFIP; 2.79 K/BB*
versus
New York Mets: Seth Lugo (R): 4.64 ERA, 4.00 FIP, 4.40 xFIP; 2.91 K/BB
*Triple-A Stats
New York Mets:
- Jose Reyes, 2B
- Brandon Nimmo, LF
- Asdrubal Cabrera, 3B
- Dominic Smith, 1B
- Travis d’Arnaud, C
- Nori Aoki, RF
- Amed Rosario, SS
- Juan Lagares, CF
- Seth Lugo, P
Chicago Cubs Lineup:
- Jon Jay, CF
- Kris Bryant, 3B
- Anthony Rizzo, 1B
- Ian Happ, 2B
- Kyle Schwarber, LF
- Javy Baez, SS
- Jason Heyward, RF
- Taylor Davis, C
- Jen-Ho Tseng, P
