This year hasn’t been as smooth as last season’s for the defending World Series champs, as the Cubs are just .500 and are sitting fourth in the National League Central standings.
The Cubs have lost five of their last six, a struggle partly to blame to their poor pitching that has allowed 33 over that span. They lost in Colorado, 3-0, on Wednesday. Thus far this month, the Cubs are sporting a 4.01 ERA. The team’s hopes of lowering that ERA tonight mostly lies on the shoulders of a call-up in Eddie Butler, who’ll be making his season debut after pitching in the minors. In three seasons with Colorado in the past, Butler accumulated a 6-16 record and a 6.50 ERA across 36 games.
The offense has to step up in the midst of the Cubs’ pitching struggles. Javier Baez is 13-for-40 (.325) with four home runs this May. Kris Bryant is gaining his MVP form back, having gone 13-for-40 (.325) with three blasts in 10 games this month.
The Cubs are 3-1 in their last four games in St. Louis.
While the Cubs will parade an unreliable pitcher on the mound later tonight, the Cards will give the ball to Mike Leake, who leads the NL in ERA.
Leake is 4-1 with a 1.79 ERA and 0.94 WHIP (third in the league). He tamed the Braves in his last start, going seven innings long and yielding three earned runs on three hits in a 5-3 road win. Leake owns a career record of 9-5 to go with a 3.52 ERA across 23 starts against the Cubs. He went 0-3 last season versus Chicago in 2016, however.
St. Louis is on a six-game win streak and is getting boost from a stout offense that has averaged 7.2 runs over that stretch. Aledmys Diaz and Jedd Gyorko are doing much of the heavy lifting for the Cards at the plate. Diaz is 14-for-41 with seven RBI’s over his last nine games. Gyorko, meanwhile, is 14-for-37 with a pair of home runs in his last nine.
The under is 4-1 in Leake’s last five home starts.
