Chicago Cubs vs. New York Mets preview, Thursday 9/14, 7:05 CT

Another Jen-Ho Tseng note, and further to the article I posted earlier this afternoon:

Tseng, at 22 years and 346 days old, will be the youngest Cub to make his major league debut as a starting pitcher since Sergio Mitre (22 years, 156 days) did so, July 22, 2003, in Atlanta. Tseng is the youngest Cubs starting pitcher to make his major league debut at Wrigley Field since Mark Prior (21 years, 257 days) did so, May 22, 2002 against the Pirates.

More on Tseng below. Other notes:

• The Cubs rank third in the National league with 732 runs. The Rockies (744) and Nationals (750) could possibly still be caught for the league lead.
• The Cubs have scored exactly 17 runs three times in the team’s last 18 games. Prior to last month, the Cubs had scored exactly 17 runs in a game seven times in the divisional play era.
• The Cubs have a 36-21 (.632) record since the All-Star Break, tied for the second-best mark in baseball with the Nationals and trailing only the Indians (43-16, .729).

Here are today’s particulars.

Cubs lineup:

Jay CF, Bryant 3B, Rizzo 1B, Happ 2B, Schwarber LF, Baez SS, Heyward RF, Davis C, Tseng P

In addition to Jen-Ho Tseng making his first big-league start, so is Taylor Davis.

Mets lineup:

Reyes 2B, Nimmo LF, Cabrera 3B, Smith 1B, d'Arnaud C, Aoki RF, Rosario SS, Lagares CF, Lugo P

Jen-Ho Tseng vs. Seth Lugo

Courtesy Chicago Cubs

Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

Jen-Ho Tseng is making his major-league debut tonight. You’ve already read quite a bit about him here and here. (And if you haven’t, check out those links now!)

His last start was 12 days ago, September 2 against Omaha. He threw seven innings, allowed eight hits and two runs and struck out three. That seems a fairly typical outing for him. Hopefully he can replicate that in the big leagues. He has obviously never faced the Mets or anyone on their roster — not even in the minors. So maybe that’s an advantage for him.

Tseng becomes the first native of Taiwan to play for the Cubs.

Seth Lugo made two relief appearances against the Cubs last year for four total scoreless innings. He has never started against the Cubs, and this year as a starter he has had mixed results. His last outing was six shutout innings against the Reds, but the start before that against the Astros wasn’t as good (five innings, eight hits, four runs).

Current Cubs are a very small sample size 3-for-12 against him. One of those hits is a home run by, of all people, Leonys Martin.

Today’s game is on ABC7 Chicago.

Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.

MLB.com Gameday (classic mode) (Note: Going forward, I am going to link to the “classic” Gameday here because MLB.com broke the links I used to use to get to their “new” Gameday. If you click on this link, you can then click on “New Gameday” at the bottom of the page to get to the updated version. Note that the “classic” Gameday won’t load until just before game time.)

Baseball-reference.com game preview

SB Nation game preview

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