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The last pitch Edward Cabrera threw that counted came on June 23 in Queens, and he walked off after five innings with two runs on his line. A left hamstring strain took the seven and a half weeks that followed, along with rehab stops in Iowa and Knoxville. Sunday afternoon he gets Wrigley Field, a national television window, and a St. Louis club that has split twelve games with the Cubs this season.
Cardinals vs Cubs
Chicago is 72-52 and has been the loudest offense on any given day this summer. The Cubs have scored 641 runs, more than any club playing Sunday, with a .755 team OPS, 157 home runs and 526 walks, which is the highest walk total in the sport. They are 36-25 at Wrigley Field and have scored 308 runs in those 61 home games, a shade over five a night, with a .773 home OPS against .738 on the road. Seven wins in the last ten put them four games behind Milwaukee in the National League Central.
St. Louis arrives at 62-61 and 13.5 games back, which understates how the Cardinals have actually played away from home. Their splits are inverted: 288 runs in 57 road games against 249 in 66 at Busch Stadium, a .724 road OPS against .668 at home, and 70 of their 127 home runs hit somewhere other than St. Louis. Alec Burleson is at .285 with 20 homers, 86 RBI and a .837 OPS. Jordan Walker sits at .280 with 23 homers and 84 RBI. The Cardinals have won six of their last ten and beat Chicago 8-4 on Saturday.
Nothing about this rivalry has been orderly. The twelve meetings have split exactly down the middle at six wins apiece and have averaged 8.58 total runs, a figure assembled from wildly unequal parts. St. Louis walked into Wrigley on July 3 and won 17-1, then shut the Cubs out 3-0 the following afternoon before Chicago answered 6-4. Three weeks later the Cubs went to Busch Stadium and took three of four, including 10-2.
This weekend has followed the same pattern. Chicago won Friday 3-0 behind a shutout. St. Louis won Saturday 8-4. Sunday is the rubber match of the series and the rubber match of the season, and the two clubs have now played twelve times without either one establishing anything resembling control.
St. Louis Cardinals Chicago CubsCabrera's arsenal is genuinely strange and it is the reason this start is worth watching regardless of the layoff. He throws a changeup 30.5 percent of the time and that changeup averages 92.9 mph, which is faster than most starters' fastballs. Behind it sit a 96.4 mph sinker at 21.4 percent, a curveball at 84.8 and a four-seamer at 96.1 he uses less than one pitch in six. The season line reads 5-4 with a 5.10 ERA, a 1.40 WHIP and 65 strikeouts against 29 walks in 72.1 innings, and the ugly number is fourteen home runs allowed in those 72.1 innings.
Hunter Dobbins goes the other way entirely. He has six pitches and none of them accounts for even a third of his workload: a 94.9 mph four-seamer at 32.1 percent, a slider at 17.2, a sweeper at 82.1 mph at 15.3, a sinker, an 88.2 mph splitter and a curveball. Six starts have produced a 3.40 ERA, a 1.31 WHIP and a .244 opponent average across 45 innings. He has been trending the right way, six and a third innings of two-run ball at Yankee Stadium on August 4 and five innings of one-run ball against Philadelphia on August 10. His one look at these Cubs came July 27 and cost him four earned runs in five and a third.
Those two ERA figures sitting six hundredths of a run apart is the tell. These clubs pitch almost identically and separate entirely on offense, where Chicago has scored 104 more runs in one fewer game. The Cubs get there through patience, 526 walks against St. Louis's 398, which matters against a starter who has issued 29 free passes in 72.1 innings and is working off seven and a half weeks of rest.
Cardinals Keys Cubs KeysDraftKings has Chicago at -153, an implied 60.5 percent, with the game total at 8.5. The season series has averaged 8.58 runs, so the total is priced almost exactly where these two clubs have actually played, and the moneyline is asking for something close to what the Cubs' home record already delivers at 36-25. What the market cannot price cleanly is the layoff. A starter making his first appearance in fifty-four days is a genuine unknown regardless of what his rehab line said, and that uncertainty cuts in both directions.
This is the rubber match twice over, for the weekend and for a season series that has refused to tilt. Chicago has the better record, the better lineup and the ballpark, and the Cubs need every game they can find with Milwaukee four in front. St. Louis has the healthier roster, the better road profile and a starter who has given up two earned runs or fewer in two of his last three. The wildcard is the arm that has not thrown a competitive pitch since June, and there is no honest way to know which version of Edward Cabrera walks out of that bullpen gate.