Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals preview, Saturday 6/25, 1:15 CT

Saturday notes...

• NICO HOERNER: Nico has 11 multi-hit games this season, including going 2-for-3 with a walk last night in St. Louis. Before this year he had never had more than three games with three-plus hits, and this year he has five such outings including a single-game high of four hits. His last five games: 7-for-18 (.471/.500/.706), a double, a home run.
• WILLSON CONTRERAS: Willson’s last 23 games since May 30 (second game of doubleheader): .282/.396/.553 (24-for-85) with five doubles, six home runs, 11 walks and 13 runs scored.
• THE BULLPEN: Cubs relievers rank third in the NL with 10.13 strikeouts per nine innings, behind the Mets (10.18) and Braves (10.42).
• IMPROVING: The Cubs are 4-4 in their last eight games after going 1-11 in their previous 12.

Here are today’s particulars.

Cubs lineup:

Cardinals lineup:

Adrian Sampson, RHP vs. Miles Mikolas, RHP

USA TODAY NETWORK

USA TODAY NETWORK

Adrian Sampson, combined in 2021 and 2022 for the Cubs, has made 12 appearances (five starts) covering 41 innings. He has a 2.41 ERA and 1.000 WHIP in those innings. That’s good!

The rest of his career, plus his peripherals, say he’s not that good, and that’s a fairly small sample size. But hey, maybe he’s figured something out.

Last year he made two starts against the Cardinals and allowed three runs in 10 innings, with 11 strikeouts. That’s also good!

So who knows, maybe this will work out all right. Sampson hasn’t thrown 100 MLB pitches this year, the cutoff for Statcast’s visuals, so the graphic below is his 2021 pitch mix.

Miles Mikolas is having a solid season. The Cubs did score four runs off him in five innings June 3 at Wrigley Field (not that it mattered, the Cardinals won 14-5).

Since then, in three starts, Mikolas has a 1.57 ERA, 0.478 WHIP and has allowed opponents a .105/.161/.224 (8-for-76) slash line.

Good luck, Cubs hitters.

Statcast

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

Please visit our SB Nation Cardinals site Viva el Birdos. If you do go there to interact with Cardinals fans, please be respectful, abide by their individual site rules and serve as a good representation of Cub fans in general and BCB in particular.

The 2022 Game Thread procedure will be like last years, 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.