Tonight, the Chicago Cubs head to St. Louis, with a chance to get their magic number down to three.
Kyle Hendricks will be the starter, bringing his league leading 2.07 ERA to the mound. In his past seven starts (dating back to August 1), Hendricks has allowed just seven earned runs (1.30 ERA) and nine walks, against 42 strikeouts. He’ll pitch to Miguel Montero.
Opposing Hendricks is righty Mike Leake. Leake hasn’t had much success with the Cardinals this season, after signing a 5 year, $75 million deal in the offseason. While many of his peripherals (GB%, K-rate, BB-rate) are improved over 2015, an elevated BABIP, a low strand rate, and a sufficiently high HR/FB ratio have conspired to dampen his production. Then again, his improved strikeout rate this season is just 16.7%, and it’s hard to find success with that kind of production. He’ll pitch to Yadier Molina.
First pitch is at 7:15 – let’s see if the Cubs can play spoiler and clincher in one series.
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Game Info
Chicago Cubs (91-51) at St. Louis Cardinals (75-67) – 7:15 CT on CSN-C, MLB , 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 this afternoon.
The Series Preview lives here. The Lineup Discussion lives here.
Starting Pitchers
Cubs: Kyle Hendricks (R): 2.07 ERA, 3.36 FIP, 3.70 xFIP; 3.54 K/BB
versus
Cardinals: Mike Leake (R): 4.61 ERA, 3.83 FIP, 3.75 xFIP; 4.44 K/BB
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St. Louis Cardinals Lineup:
- Kolton Wong, 2B
- Stephen Piscotty, RF
- Matt Carpenter, 1B
- Randal Grichuk, CF
- Yadier Molina, C
- Jedd Gyorko, SS
- Jhonny Peralta, 3B
- Jeremy Hazelbaker, LF
- Mike Leake, P
Chicago Cubs Lineup:
- Dexter Fowler, CF
- Kris Bryant, 3B
- Anthony Rizzo, 1B
- Ben Zobrist, LF
- Addison Russell, SS
- Miguel Montero, C
- Jason Heyward, RF
- Javy Baez, 2B
- Kyle Hendricks, P