Cubs 4, Brewers 0

In Postgame by berselius8 Comments

OSS: Pitching, defense, and baserunning wins the day!

Three up:

  1. Dansby Swanson had a great Cubs debut, going 3-4 including the GWRBI and playing solid defense at SS. His third inning RBI single was the biggest play of the day by WPA, and he came around to score on a Trey Mancini single, which was the second highest impact play
  2. Facing a perennial CYA contender, Marcus Stroman did not blink and went on to outpitch him. Stroman pitched six scoreless innings, striking out eight Beers. He ran into some trouble in the third inning but managed to induce an inning ending double play from Rowdy Tellez to squash the Brewers rally. He also busted out a great hesitation move for a strike in that AB that may or may not have been deliberate – he was rushing to get the pitch off and may have lost his balance.
  3. Keegan Thompson looked great after having a rough spring. I for one thought the Cubs might shelve him for a week to get fresh before the regular season. But his velocity ticked up in the last week of spring, and he certainly had it today, easily hitting 95 with the good stuff I remember from last year.

Three-ish down:

  1. Yan Gomes had a rough day catching balls behind the plate today…it’s kind of in the job description. As was noted on the broadcast he was probably trying to push some pitches for framing purposes, and it seems like either Stroman’s stuff had a lot more movement on it today or Gomes just isn’t used to his stuff yet. When balls weren’t going to the backstop, Stroman and Gomes did a great job exploiting the home plate umpire’s generous strike zone, especially on the outside corner against right handed batters.
    Gomes also had the Cubs lowest WPA play of the day with a GIDP in the second.
  2. Eric Hosmer went 0-4, including three weak groundouts, and almost ran into Stroman twice on the field. Hurry up and hit your service time numbers, Matt Mervis. I guess the CBA changes were just there to protect guys like KB (dying laughing).
  3. I was going to grumble about the three man booth here, but Joe Girardi grew on me over the course of the game. J.D. felt pretty quiet overall so hopefully they balance things out a bit as the season goes on, if indeed Girardi is around fairly often.

Next up: The teams have tomorrow off, then Bill Rhinelander takes on Justin Steele at 1:20 PM CT on Saturday.

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