David Troy
Videos by OutKick
Giants vs. Cubs, 2:20 ET
I don’t know about you all, but this wasn’t a very happy Labor Day weekend for me as my Outkick Bets posts did not do well. I had the ole goose egg and really wasn’t too close on a few of those College Football bets. Alas, it is a long season but with such a small sample size, the record just looks bad. Back we go to the diamond today and I have a play in the Giants vs. Cubs.
The schedule makers really didn’t do much to help out the Giants in this series. Not only have they now lost three straight games and four of their last five, but they have to fly to Chicago after the loss and now take on a team they are chasing in the Wild Card race. The Giants have been up and down most of the season, and their (essentially) .500 record is a reflection of that struggle. When they are hot, they are very hot. When they are cold, they are ice cold. Today they need to heat up if they want to take some of the games from the Cubs this week. The good news for them is that they get their Ace, Logan Webb to open the series and set them up with a good start. Webb has just a 9-11 record, but he is in the top 20 of the Majors for the ERA, strikeouts, and WHIP. The bad news for Webb is that he has been much worse on the road than at home this year. On the road, his ERA is more than two runs higher and he has 13 less innings pitched away from San Francisco. August has been decent for him but the Giants are just 3-3 in the games.
The Cubs kind of wasted a golden opportunity this past weekend. They were facing their division foes, the Cincinnati Reds, but they weren’t really able to step on their throat and now they still need to deal with them not only in the division, but in the Wild Card race. The Cubs had the potential to win all four games against the Reds, but they had to settle for a split as they dropped two games in two nights in the ninth inning. They have a much shorter trip to travel for this series, and they are in the comfort of the Friendly Confines, but the real edge is that Justin Steele is pitching for them. I’ve made a case for him being the Cy Young winner this year, and I’m not going to keep rewriting that. But, the guy is 15-3 with a 2.69 ERA. He doesn’t have overwhelming strikeout numbers and his WHIP is just 21st, but he’s doing everything else well and clearly leading this team in pitching. Since the All-Star break, Steele has turned in seven quality starts out of nine games. The Cubs are 8-1 in that stretch of his starts. The Giants have had good luck against Steele, but he also hasn’t ever pitched like this before.
Take the Cubs to win this game. This is a bad spot for the Giants having to travel from the West Coast and play this one today. I won’t say it is terrible or something, but I do think it will impact the Giants and they aren’t playing well to begin with. Steele has been great and Webb on the road hasn’t performed all that well. I’ll back the Cubs at -135.
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