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Today is Friday the 13th, the only such date during the 2013 baseball season. Carrie Muskat details what we need to know about 9/13/13:
#Cubs enter tonight’s game 47-47 in 94 Gs played on a Friday the 13th. They've won last 3 Gs, including 2 last year. Avoid all ladders
— Carrie Muskat (@CarrieMuskat) September 13, 2013
Those wins in 2012 were Friday, April 13 against the Cardinals and Friday, July 13 against the Diamondbacks. Look at those boxscores and note how few players are still left on this team from either of those games.
FWIW, if you did not know, "triskaidekaphobia" is "fear of the number 13." If you have that, you probably shouldn't look at the photo at the top of this post.
Now, on to tonight's details.
Cubs lineup:
Castro SS, Valbuena 3B, Rizzo 1B, Navarro C, Schierholtz RF, Sweeney CF, Bogusevic LF, Barney 2B, Arrieta P
Pirates lineup:
Tabata LF, Walker 2B, McCutchen CF, Morneau 1B, Alvarez 3B, Martin C, Jones RF, Barmes SS, Morton P
Today's Starting Pitchers |
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Jake Arrieta last faced the Pirates June 13, 2012 in Baltimore. It was one of the better starts of his Orioles career; he gave up just one run in seven innings, striking out nine. If Arrieta wants to stick in the Cubs' rotation in 2014, he's going to have to consistently have more starts like that. Current Pirates are 9-for-58 (.155) against him with no home runs.
Charlie Morton threw six innings against the Cubs July 6 at Wrigley Field, a game the Cubs actually won. Unfortunately, the reason the Cubs won that game was that Alfonso Soriano hit a pair of two-run homers off Morton. Obviously, that won't be happening tonight, and the rest of the Cubs had just five hits in six innings off Morton, who has a 2.72 ERA in his last seven starts. Clearly, we are doomed.
Today's game is on CSN Chicago.
Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.
Baseball-reference.com game preview
Please visit our SB Nation Pirates site Bucs Dugout.
Here's the scoop on game threads for 2013. You'll find the game preview -- like this one -- posting as the first link in the StoryStream™, which will then contain all the overflow threads and the recap. The recap will also be on the front page as a separate post; once I post a game recap, the stream for each game will be retitled "Cubs vs. (Team) (Day of Week) Game Threads" so you can go back and find every thread related to that particular game.
In general, game previews will post two hours before game time. Exception: for day games after night games, that will usually be 90 minutes.
You will also be able to find the First Pitch Thread and all the overflow threads in the box marked "Chicago Cubs Game Threads" at the bottom of the front page (you can also find them in this section link). They will also appear in this StoryStream™. As I've done for each regular-season game for several years now, we'll have the First Pitch thread at five minutes before game time (moved up from actual game time per your requests), then an overflow one hour, two hours and 2:45 after game time.