Cubs (Taillon) vs Padres (Cease): 4/14/25, 8:40pm

[Brandon Glick]

That was an incredible series win against the Dodgers, but the Steele news is still bumming me out. Another win against the Padres would make me feel a bit better... 

 

[mul21]

I would not have expected to see Taillon with a lower ERA than Cease.  I'm very done with these west coast games and would like to see a bunch of 1:20 starts to keep me entertained while working.

[Bertz]

Cease has a horrible ERA but the peripherals do not back it up.  This is still going to be really a tough night.

Conversely for this upcoming weekend Corbin Burnes and Zac Gallen's horrible ERA's are largely backed up by bad peripherals.  So there's an argument that this is the last really tough pitching matchup until the Phillies come to town in a week and a half.

[NorthsideAvenger]

Just get one W in this series.

[Bull]

Two games up on Milwaukee feels … necessary… heading into this series.

[Irrelevant Dude]

1 minute ago, NorthsideAvenger said:

Just get one W in this series.

Pretty much.  Don't get swept and come home 12-9 or better.  Just keep treading water and crossing these tough series off the calendar.

[Rcal10]

17 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Cease has a horrible ERA but the peripherals do not back it up.  This is still going to be really a tough night.

Conversely for this upcoming weekend Corbin Burnes and Zac Gallen's horrible ERA's are largely backed up by bad peripherals.  So there's an argument that this is the last really tough pitching matchup until the Phillies come to town in a week and a half.

Pretty sure the Cubs will see Yamamoto AGAIN, against the Dodgers. He goes Thursday this week. Have to think he pitches on Wednesday. 🤷

[Bertz]

18 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

Pretty sure the Cubs will see Yamamoto AGAIN, against the Dodgers. He goes Thursday this week. Have to think he pitches on Wednesday. 🤷

It's definitely possible with all the off days, but with the Monday off day the Dodgers would have to skip someone.  Right now it's slated for us to get Dustin May and Landon Knack.

[Rcal10]

30 minutes ago, Bertz said:

It's definitely possible with all the off days, but with the Monday off day the Dodgers would have to skip someone.  Right now it's slated for us to get Dustin May and Landon Knack.

Hope they don’t skip anyone. But I wouldn’t count on Knack.

[We Got The Whole 9]

The Cubs need to see Yamamoto more. 

[Dfan25]

1 hour ago, Rcal10 said:

Pretty sure the Cubs will see Yamamoto AGAIN, against the Dodgers. He goes Thursday this week. Have to think he pitches on Wednesday. 🤷

Dodgers don’t play Thursday . Dodgers are likely to use Yamamoto on 5-6 days rest as much as possible . I think he likely starts Friday against Texas and the Cubs will miss him .

[BKHoo]

Are we only allowed to play above 500 teams? It seems we have played the Dodgers more than any team in the league. 

[Transmogrified Tiger]

14 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

The Cubs need to see Yamamoto more. 

I understand what you're getting at, but also Yamamoto has made about 20% of his MLB starts against the Cubs. He can be someone else's problem for a while*.

*Until his inevitable IL stint

[UMFan83]

Fairly big earthquake just hit relatively close to San Diego (I've seen 5.7-6.0 in magnitude).  Doesn't seem to be any major damage (though its early, just happened less than 30 mins ago) but I'm sure the Cubs felt it.

[Chicago Al]

26 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Fairly big earthquake just hit relatively close to San Diego (I've seen 5.7-6.0 in magnitude).  Doesn't seem to be any major damage (though its early, just happened less than 30 mins ago) but I'm sure the Cubs felt it.

I live in San Diego, we’re pretty used to earthquakes unfortunately… It lasted less than 5 seconds but it shook the house pretty good. No damage thank God. I’ll be at the game tomorrow!

[CubinNY]

34 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

Fairly big earthquake just hit relatively close to San Diego (I've seen 5.7-6.0 in magnitude).  Doesn't seem to be any major damage (though its early, just happened less than 30 mins ago) but I'm sure the Cubs felt it.

I was on a video call with someone who lives in San Diego when it happend. 

[UMFan83]

I saw these power rankings on twitter and laughed that 26 of the Cubs first 29 games are from the 9 other teams on this list including 16 against the top 3 teams.

[CubinNY]

13 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

I saw these power rankings on twitter and laughed that 26 of the Cubs first 29 games are from the 9 other teams on this list including 16 against the top 3 teams.

There are a lot of variables at work, obviously, but it seems hard to overstate how different this lineup is now that Tucker is on the team. He's like a force multiplier. 

Edited April 14, 2025 by CubinNY

[Transmogrified Tiger]

10 minutes ago, CubinNY said:

There are a lot of variables at work, obviously, but it seems hard to overstate how different this lineup is now that Tucker is on the team. He's like a force multiplier. 

The position player group in total has worked really well together too.  They're getting slug from their best players(Tucker, Seiya, Kelly), the bottom half is running all over the place(1st in SB), and everyone is showing good plate discipline and playing good defense to help a pitching staff that's off to a mediocre start on the whole.  It's very fun to think about how the pitching staff might improve when not playing a Top 10 offense every night, or at least be able to manage Steele's loss better.

[Bobson Dugnutt]

10 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

They're getting slug from their best players(Tucker, Seiya, Kelly)

Hahahaha

[Banedon]

54 minutes ago, UMFan83 said:

I saw these power rankings on twitter and laughed that 26 of the Cubs first 29 games are from the 9 other teams on this list including 16 against the top 3 teams.

They've had the toughest schedule in the MLB so far and it's not even really close.

2025 MLB Baseball Relative Power Index - Major League Baseball - ESPN

[Bertz]

55 minutes ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

The position player group in total has worked really well together too.  They're getting slug from their best players(Tucker, Seiya, Kelly), the bottom half is running all over the place(1st in SB), and everyone is showing good plate discipline and playing good defense to help a pitching staff that's off to a mediocre start on the whole.  It's very fun to think about how the pitching staff might improve when not playing a Top 10 offense every night, or at least be able to manage Steele's loss better.

One of the things that's nice too is that we do actually have reinforcements available to the pitching staff if things backslide further. 

Last May when the season was slipping away one of the things that sucked was that every pitcher of substance at Iowa was also hurt.  So the only guys available to stop the bleeding were like Colten Brewer and Richard Lovelady.  On the SP front we just had to keep running Hendricks out there even though it was clear he was cooked.

Right now I'm excited for Palencia and Wicks to come up.  Neely and Horton and Little don't seem that far off.  If you just needed to stop some bleeding guys like Noland and Hughes could probably give you some boring innings.  It's a far cry from a year ago even if there are some parallels with the bullpen.

[Cubfanintheknow]

2 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

The position player group in total has worked really well together too.  They're getting slug from their best players(Tucker, Seiya, Kelly), the bottom half is running all over the place(1st in SB), and everyone is showing good plate discipline and playing good defense to help a pitching staff that's off to a mediocre start on the whole.  It's very fun to think about how the pitching staff might improve when not playing a Top 10 offense every night, or at least be able to manage Steele's loss better.

It's great that it's worked so well, it's buying time for Shaw and PCA to work through early season struggles without it drastically affecting the win column.

[Jason Ross]

Same lineup as last night, except for Amaya in for Kelly. No Suzuki yet.

[muntjack]

I'm sorry.  I understand how unimportant lineup order is but I still hate Turner hitting 3rd. Would rather see any other RHH there.