Cubs vs Cardinals Odds
| Chicago Cubs Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Moneyline | Total | Run Line |
-160 | 8 +100o / -120u | -1.5 -110 |
| St. Louis Cardinals Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Moneyline | Total | Run Line |
+135 | 8 +100o / -120u | +1.5 -130 |
The Chicago Cubs find themselves in a bit of trouble, falling two games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central with three straight series losses. Their offense has disappeared over the last week, but fortunately their best pitcher will be heading to the hill on Friday.
Shota Imanaga may well be the best pitcher in MLB at this point, posting a special 0.84 ERA and 0.91 WHIP over the course of his first nine big-league starts, alleviating some of of the pressure on Chicago's offense. With the struggling Miles Mikolas toeing the slab for the St. Louis Cardinals, is this a good spot for Chicago to rebound at the plate?
Let's dig a bit further into this matchup and break down Cubs vs. Cardinals on Friday night.
Chicago Cubs
The Cubs had a borderline top-10 offense by wRC+ just a week and a half ago, but they now find themselves down in 22nd in that category after a disastrous couple of weeks. Over that span, Chicago is slashing just .202/.294/.312, on account of a severe power outage which has left them with a .110 ISO.
The good news is that Chicago has not only returned a couple of key bats to the lineup over the last two weeks — Seiya Suzuki, Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner — but has remained a team that doesn't strike out very much at under 23% and is walking in nearly 10% of its plate appearances. This offense continues to hit a lot of fly balls, doing so at a rate over the last 14 days that's nearly four percentage points higher than what we've seen this season, but there's been little to show for them.
The unfortunate thing here is that the wind continues to swirl at Wrigley Field, which has killed a lot of their chances for extra-base hits and homers, and now they shift to a very pitcher-friendly park on Friday.
That should benefit Imanaga, who's pitched to a large number of fly balls this season at 12 points higher than the league average. It's not ordinarily something that works at this level, but with a spicy 27.8% strikeout rate, few walks and a decent 7% barrel rate, the expected stats with the lefty are neat and tidy. It's bound to bite him at some point when he faces a powerful offense in a smaller park, but it should continue to be effective here.
St. Louis Cardinals
On the flip side, we have a career ground-ball pitcher in Mikolas, who's come in well under his career average over the last two seasons and has seen a huge spike in the number of well-struck balls he's allowed. He's all the way up to 44.1% in hard-hit rate, keeping his Expected Batting Average around .290 for a second straight season.
While contact-oriented pitchers can always outperform their expected metrics due to a number of factors, among them the slight flaw in the hit probabilities which don't factor in spray angle and fielder positioning, it doesn't seem Mikolas has a great case. The Cardinals are 17th in Outs Above Average defensively and 2oth in the infield, and with all the hard contact, these batted balls are much more likely to go for hits no matter where they're placed.
St. Louis has been putting the ball in the air a lot more over the last two weeks with a 37.3% fly-ball rate, which comes in above its season-long mark, and while it's been a struggle to find power this year, its ISO is up to .151 over the past two weeks.
The Cardinals have done a good job of limiting strikeouts and walking at nearly a 10% clip, but given St, Louis grades out as the 22nd-hardest park to homer in, it could be a bit of a tough spot to believe in a Cardinals offense that's improved of late but still looks rather one-dimensional.
Cubs vs. Cardinals
Betting Pick & Prediction
We've seen fly balls die in the wind this week at Wrigley, and the story Friday should be no different for both teams in spacious Busch Stadium.
Imanaga has pitched to a ton of balls in the air all season, and while Mikolas hasn't done so quite as much the number of batted balls he's allowing coupled with the preferred launch angle of Chicago should mean both teams are seeking some home runs here.
The Cubs have struggled lately, but they've been at their best against ground-ball pitchers. They have a .238 average and own a solid .705 OPS against finesse pitchers, which leaves their .647 OPS against power pitchers in the dust. Stringing together hits to score runs hasn't been something that's been possible over the last few games, but with an influx of walks for Mikolas and a very patient approach for Chicago, it would seem the home team is in a much better spot offensively.
While I do think the under is in play given the park factor, in a larger sense you need to believe in the offense that's going to have more success in terms of getting runners on base. That would skew the matchup heavily toward Chicago, which has actually benefited from facing ground-ballers despite its high number of fly balls.
Mikolas should be in trouble here, and his defense and offense shouldn't be there to save him.
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