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Of the Cubs' 23 remaining games, nine are at home, where they have played .389 ball, and 14 on the road, where they have played .462 so far this year.
If the Cubs play at those percentages, they'd go 10-13 and a 69-93 finish.
That sounds good, right? Ah, but the more important split is probably this one: 20 of the 23 remaining games are within the National League Central, where the Cubs are 19-37 (just one team, the Astros, has a worse record within its own division). The other three are against the Braves, a team rolling toward a division title.
If the Cubs play at those percentages, we're looking at 6-17, which seems more likely with 16 of the 23 games against contenders. That'd result in a 65-97 season.
The seven remaining games against a non-contender are all against the Brewers. Three of them are this weekend, starting today. The weather should be nice.
Cubs lineup:
Castro SS, Barney 2B, Rizzo 1B, Schierholtz RF, Sweeney CF, Murphy 3B, Lake LF, Castillo C, Rusin P
Personally, I'd still like to see Logan Watkins get a start every once in a while.
Brewers lineup:
Aoki RF, Segura SS, Lucroy C, Ramirez 3B, Gomez CF, Davis LF, Halton 1B, Bianchi 2B, Lohse P
Today's Starting Pitchers |
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Chris Rusin made his major-league debut against the Brewers August 21, 2012 at Miller Park, and gave Milwaukee just one hit in five innings. That's good! So is Rusin's record so far this year; he's shown signs that he could become a solid back-end rotation starter going forward. He should have four (maybe five) more starts; he's posted four quality starts out of nine (though the first one, an emergency trade fill-in, really shouldn't count as he wasn't expected to go deep in to the game) and really hasn't had any terrible outings.
In two starts against the Cubs this year, Kyle Lohse has thrown 13 innings and allowed three earned runs, with nine strikeouts. The Brewers won both of the games, and current Cubs are hitting .221 (23-for-104) against Lohse with one home run (Nate Schierholtz). Doom? Maybe.
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 Brewers site Brew Crew Ball. The usual caution is advised.
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.
Discuss amongst yourselves.