Cincinnati Reds vs. Chicago Cubs – June 1st, 2024

Cincinnati Reds vs. Chicago Cubs today – June 1st, 2024 – It is JUNE, my dudes & dudettes. That means the schedule is set to open up a little more, that means Noelvi Marte and Christian Encarnacion-Strand are set to be back, that means the weather gets warmer and more homeruns are hit, that means…the Reds play a LOT of divisional games coming up and ground can be made up. But they have to keep winning. Shocker, right?

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Cincinnati Reds RHP Hunter Greene

Hunter Greene has been an entirely new pitcher in 2024, and that shouldn’t scare anybody, he’s been in his BAG. He mowed down the Dodgers lineup although he wasn’t even as efficient as he’s been on the year, only throwing 68 out of 107 of his pitches for strikes. He held the Doyers to 5 hits and 1 run through 6 innings pitch. On the year, he currently sits at 2.3 brWAR, AKA the Cincinnati Reds most valuable player as of June 1st, just in front of Elly de La Cruz. Hunter is 90th percentile or above in xERA & xBA and fastball velo. Considering he’s still learning as he goes, this is incredible. His fastball run value is also in the 97th percentile, however, his breaking and offspeed value are quite worse, and in the bottom 30 percentile in all of MLB. The kid just needs to keep polishing his secondaries, and this is a genuine front line ACE we have and have prayed for. I think he is due for a bad game, it’s going to be nippy out there and rainy, we’ll see if he has his stuff today or not.

Cincinnati Reds Lineup Card (TBA)

TJ Friedl came back yesterday and had a big time insurance run RBI that helped propel the Reds to a win early on in a series again. It was textbook Terry, let a ball run to him, slap it the other way. Good sign of what’s hopefully to come.

Elly is batting .216 in the month of May. That is the most concerning thing by far. The new big metric bat speed has Elly in the 89th percentile, but we already knew he would be up there. The problem is clear. He whiffs over 30% of the time. Doesn’t matter how fast your bat moves if you can’t make contact. He needs to slow the at-bat down and wait on the ball – he’s striking out on offspeed stuff more than anything else. Tonight facing a LHP likely won’t yield better results. We’re going to need some better production from Stuart Fairchild tonight, and I’m going to loop Steer in here as well. This is a good matchup for him.

Chicago Cubs LHP Justin Steele

Justin Steele, as I predicted, has not been the Justin Steele many Chicago Cubs fans thought they’d be getting this year. He was incredible last year, no secret about it, received several Cy Young votes, even, but he’s been getting hit HARD this year so far. If you’re a Cubs fan, you know that they haven’t won any of his last few starts dating back to last year – but there’s something to be positive about here tonight, the Reds haven’t fared well against LHP at all, and the only guy that *should* be in the lineup tonight that’s had great success is Tyler Stephenson. His career ERA against Cincinnati says he should get shitted on tonight, but I don’t see it happening, personally. 7.53 ERA in 8 games, 6 starts – the Reds have a team OPS of .967 against him. The majority of this damage against him came against players no longer donning Cincinnati across their chest, however, and shouldn’t be a reason to bet against him. And I say he hasn’t been the “same” Steele very lightly…he’s just a few bad pitches away from being stout as can be, K% is normal, not walking guys, there’s just a lot of batted balls finding their way.

Chicago Cubs Lineup Card (TBA)

Honestly, the Cubs lineup has not been too much better than the Reds. That is not a surprise when you see that the Cubs expected wins on the season is the same as Cincinnati’s. The Cubs will load their lineup tonight with a lot of LHP in anticipation of breaking up Hunter Greene’s great 2024 campaign. We’ll see how it works out for them…