Chicago Cubs vs. St. Louis Cardinals preview, Friday 6/3, 1:20 CT

Friday notes...

• THE SCHWINDY CITY: Frank Schwindel, in 22 games since May 11: .267./312/.523 (23-for-86) with seven doubles, five home runs, six walks and 12 runs scored.
• WILLSON!: Willson Contreras extended his hitting streak to eight games Thursday evening and during the streak is batting .367/.487/.833 (11-for-30) with two doubles, four home runs and eight runs scored.
• ALSO STREAKING: Clint Frazier reached base in all three of his plate appearances Thursday and has a streak of eight straight PA reaching base (dating to May 30). That’s the longest such streak for a Cub since Anthony Rizzo (also eight PA) from August 18-20, 2019. It’s also raised his season OBP to .405.
• THE CLOSE ONES: The Cubs’ last six games have all been decided by two or fewer runs (3-3). On the season, they have had 30 games decided by two or fewer runs, tied for most in MLB with the Orioles. Unfortunately, the Cubs have gone just 12-18 in those games (compared to 10-11 in all other games).

Here are today’s particulars.

Cubs lineup:

Cardinals lineup:

Marcus Stroman, RHP vs. Miles Mikolas, RHP

Marcus Stroman had one of his best starts of the year last Sunday against the White Sox.

So far, though, his success this season has come away from Wrigley Field:

Home: 6.28 ERA, 1.395 WHIP (three starts)
Road: 2.79 ERA, 0.931 WHIP (five starts)

He’ll have to start pitching better at Wrigley. There’s also this:

Day games: 0.47 ERA, 0.684 WHIP (three starts)
Night games: 6.66 ERA, 1.397 WHIP (five starts)

Small sample size caveats, but yikes. At least this home game is a day game.

Miles Mikolas is a guy the Cubs should have signed before 2018, maybe that season goes better if they had done that. And they could have — wouldn’t have been too expensive at that time.

Sigh.

Anyway, Mikolas missed 2020 and most of 2021 with Tommy John surgery, but has come back with 10 solid starts this year. He last faced the Cubs May 22, 2021 and you might remember him walking off the field that day with a forearm injury that cost him a couple months.

Jason Heyward, Willson Contreras and Ian Happ are a combined .292 (14-for-48) against Mikolas, for whatever that’s worth.

Statcast

Statcast

Today’s game is on Marquee Sports Network. Here’s a list of providers currently carrying Marquee. It’s also on MLB Network (outside the Cubs and Cardinals market territories).

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.