The Cubs continue their western road trip with another key series in the Race to the….oh who cares, we’re just tuning in to see Baez, and Baez at Coors Field at that. Aisle424 wrote a great piece this morning on the callup and what it means for the fans and the process.
Team Overviews
Cubs
- wRC+: 88 (12th)
- UBR: 5.7 (1st)
- UZR: -0.5 (10th)
- DRS: -9 (14th)
- SP FIP-: 91 (2nd)
- RP FIP-: 89 (3rd)
- Run differential: -39 (12th)
- R+RBI: 842 (10th)
Rockies
- wRC+: 98 (3rd)
- UBR: -0.9 (10th)
- UZR: 2.4 (7th)
- DRS: 11 (7th)
- SP FIP-: 109 (13th)
- RP FIP-: 103 (13th)
- Run differential: -66 (13th)
- R+RBI: 1006 (1st)
News, notes, vengeance pacts, injuries, etc
Still lots of injuries in Colorado. Carlos Gonzalez is still dealing with an ankle sprain, which he reaggravated in the Rockies last series. Michael Cuddyer is out with a broken shoulder, and Tulo is still out indefinitely with a hip injury. They also have 60% of their starting rotation on the 60 day DL, so it’s not too surprising their record has taken a cliffdive since their hot start.
Kyuji Fujikawa‘s officially official rehab stint expires today, so the Cubs will have to decide what to do with him. It sounds like he’s ready to go, and he needs a 40 man spot, so we should be seeing a Chris Valaika DFA any time now.
Chris Coghlan‘s suddenly been kinda good over the past month or so, and his numbers this year rival (and are arguably better than) his 2009 rookie of the year campaign. Of course, he put up a total of -1.4 WAR from 2010-2013, so let’s not get too excited and start penciling him in LF for the next few seasons or anything.
More news + notes in today’s DFP, assuming it’s viewable by you common folk.
It looks like USA Today/MLBAM is pulling the plug on Sports on Earth, the second largeish online sports site that actually pays its writers. Bummer, as there was good stuff over there, but I’ve always wondered how much traffic that kind of longish form sports journalism actually pulls, and I guess we have our answer unfortunately.
Pitching Matchups
Tuesday: Javier Baez, LHP (5.10, 4.44, 4.24) vs Javier Baez, LHP (3.12, 3.67, 3.52), 7:40 PM CT
Anderson has been surprisingly good since coming over to the Rockies. The biggest part of his success this year is the fact that he’s only allowed ONE home run, but you’d expect a guy with a .323 BABIP playing half his games in Coors to have a much higher ERA than 3.12. His last outing was against the Cubs at Wrigley, where he struck out nine in seven innings with two runs on eleven hits and no walks.
He faced off against Wood in that outing, who had yet another rocky start to the game but managed to strike out a career high eleven batters in his six innings of work. His LD rate jumped after the last outing, but for the most part I’m not too worried about Wood.
Wednesday: Javier Baez, RHP (2.11, 2.82, 3.85) vs Javier Baez, RHP (3.52, 3.78, 4.43), 7:40 PM CT
Watching Arrieta TRANSFORM this year has been tons of fun. He was mowing down the Rockies lineup in his last start with great movement on his pitches, and said after the game that he didn’t even have his best stuff. The last time that he didn’t pitch at least six innings in a start was over two months ago.
Lyles spent three seasons with the Astros, posting a 5+ ERA every year with 65 starts for the team. And somehow I remember him as being one of their better starters. The 2010s Astros, everyone! He’s been one of the rare pitchers who has looked a lot better since moving to Coors. They’re helped by a too-high strand rate and too-low BABIP, but his MO in Coors has been to allow as few fly balls as possible, which has limited the HRs. Teams feasted on his fastball(s) in previous years but he’s been about average with them in 2014.
Thursday: Javier Baez, RHP (2.05, 3.57, 4.35) vs TBA (Javier Baez?), 2:10 PM CT
Hendricks looked fantastic pitching in front of his local-ish friends and family against the loaded Dodgers lineup. He’s never going to be a big strikeout guy, but if he can keep painting the corners like he did in that game he’ll have a place on this team. Given how many extra inning games the Cubs have played lately, the fact that he’s gone 6-7 innings in every start must have helped further endear him to the coaching staff.