Cubs Will Crush the Dodgers Today

Dodgers vs. Cubs, 7:40 ET

The one loss that I had yesterday was a bit of a tough pill to swallow. I suppose if I was on the other end of it I'd have said it was a great call. In reality, it would've been lucky that it worked out that way. Yesterday, I took the Braves to win through five innings. The game ended 1-0 and the score came from the Padres in the fourth inning. Sometimes stuff just doesn't bounce your way. Let's get one bouncing our way today.

The Dodgers are under .500. I honestly don't remember the last time they were under .500 after 19 games. It could've been as recent as two years ago but I'm not going to bother looking it up, because frankly, the past doesn't matter. Their team doesn't look quite as good as it used to. Now they are playing the Cubs once again after just hosting Chicago in their own stadium. The Dodgers team is hitting just .232 for the season which is not good for a team with all of these high-paid players. The pitching staff is really struggling. I think that should be somewhat expected. Tony Gonsolin is out, so is Walker Buehler, that's 40% of the rotation. Today they send out Michael Grove to the mound. His first start was "eh" fine. He went four innings and allowed three earned runs. Then he took on the Diamondbacks on the road and allowed nine earned runs. It was not a good look for him. He did face the Cubs in his last start, by far the best one. It was a home start where he went 5.2 innings and allowed just a solo home run and one additional hit.

The Cubs are one of the more surprising teams in baseball thus far. They are looking really solid with an 11-6 record and they are hitting better than expected. Their pitching staff is even one of the better in the league to this point with a 3.07 ERA collectively. They are currently on a four-game winning streak and they allowed just three earned runs to the lowly Athletics in their last series. Both teams have to travel from California in order to play this game, so I do think there could be a bit of jetlag for them in this game. They have their offseason signing, Jameson Taillon take the ball against the Dodgers once again. The Cubs have lost all three of his starts, but I wouldn't really call him the reason for it. He's allowed just seven earned runs over 14 innings. It seems like the Cubs are being cautious with him as he's only thrown 85 pitches in the highest outing. All seven earned runs have come in Taillon's home starts.

I don't think this is an over for the game and 11 runs is a lot for them to get to. I do think the Cubs will win this game though. My biggest problem is a lot of Cubs free agents happen to struggle at Wrigley for whatever reason. For example, Marcus Stroman was really bad at Wrigley until about August last season. I'm going to take the Cubs in this one. I do heavily lean towards the under though.

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