Chicago Cubs vs. Milwaukee Brewers preview, Wednesday 6/30, 1:10 CT

Today’s roster move: Here

Wednesday notes:

• NOT GIVING UP HITS: The Cubs allowed just two hits last night, marking the first loss for the team in which they surrendered two or fewer hits since August 4, 2013, vs. the Dodgers (1-0). The previous time the Cubs had allowed two or fewer hits on the road in a defeat was July 21, 2008 at Arizona (2-0).
• NOT USING THE BASERUNNERS THEY DO GET: The Cubs have drawn 15 walks in the first two games of this series but have gone 1-for-13 with runners in scoring position, including 1-for-10 Tuesday.
• EVEN JAVY WALKS: Javier Báez has drawn a walk in three straight games for the first time since a career-high tying four-game stretch with a walk in each, done Sept. 10-13, 2018 (first done Aug. 25-28, 2017).
• STILL HITTING FOR POWER: The Cubs have hit 107 home runs on the season, third in the NL behind the Braves (110) and Giants (116).

Here are today’s particulars.

Cubs lineup:

Brewers lineup:

Jake Arrieta, RHP vs. Aaron Ashby, LHP

USA TODAY Sports

USA TODAY NETWORK

There’s no sugarcoating it — Jake Arrieta has had a bad June. I’ll spare you the numbers and instead remind you that he made two starts against the Brewers in April and did fairly well in both of them. Overall vs. Milwaukee this year: 11 innings, four runs, 13 strikeouts. The Cubs got shut out in both of those games, but that’s not Jake’s fault.

In eight career starts at used-to-be-Miller Park, Jake has a 3.04 ERA and 0.951 WHIP. Let’s hope he can conjure up memories of pitching there in 2015 and 2016.

Aaron Ashby is making his MLB debut this afternoon. He was the Brewers’ fourth-round pick in the 2018 draft and will be the first player from that round to play in the majors.

His minor-league numbers are fairly pedestrian, though I do note that he strikes out a lot of guys (13.3 per nine innings this year at Triple-A Nashville). He also walks a lot of guys (5.7 per nine innings this year at Nashville). He was a starter till early June, then moved to the bullpen. As such, he hasn’t thrown more than 39 pitches in an outing since June 4.

That’s about all I’ve got. As is usual for guys like this, he has never faced the Cubs or anyone on the Cubs active roster. Hopefully they can get to him early; he’s not likely to go more than two innings or so.

Jake Arrieta’s pitch frequency chart is below. There isn’t a similar chart available for Aaron Ashby but here’s some detail on his pitching from MLB.com.

Statcast

Today’s game is on Marquee Sports Network. Here’s a list of providers currently carrying Marquee.

Here is the complete MLB.com Mediacenter for today.

MLB.com Gameday

Baseball-reference.com game preview

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The 2021 Game Thread procedure will be a bit different than previous years. It will be similar to what we’ve used for Spring Training.

You’ll find the game preview posted separately on the front page two hours before game time (90 minutes for some early day games following night games).

At the same time, a StoryStream containing the preview will also post on the front page, titled “Cubs vs. (Team) (Day of week/date) game threads.” It will contain every post related to that particular game, including the First Pitch Thread and the overflow thread, as well as the recap when it’s published. The recap will also live on the front page as a separate post.

You will also be able to find the preview, First Pitch Thread and the overflow thread in the box marked “Chicago Cubs Game Threads” at the bottom of the front page (you can also find them in this section link). The StoryStream for each game can also be found in that section.

The First Pitch thread will post at five minutes before game time, then an overflow thread at 90 minutes after the scheduled game time.

Discuss amongst yourselves.