Despite that heartbreaking loss to the Astros last weekend and the enormous loss to the Brewers on Monday, that nine-game road trip wasn’t a complete disaster for the Mariners. A 4-5 record against two of the best teams in baseball plus a series win against the division leader kept Seattle on the fringe of the playoff picture. And now they’re calling up Kade Anderson to start Saturday’s game. Even if the team doesn’t get its act together to make a run over the last few weeks of the season, at least
we get the excitement of the debut of the team’s top prospect to enjoy.
The Cubs started off this year extremely hot and cold — they famously had two separate 10-game win streaks within a four week period followed by a 10-game losing streak a week later. A ton of injuries to their pitching staff prevented them from finding much consistency, but they’ve finally found some reinforcements and have settled in as one of the better teams in the National League. They have the best record in the NL since the All-Star break, and are making a late season push for the NL Central lead.
The Cubs have assembled one of the best lineups in baseball and a lot of that is thanks to MVP candidate Pete Crow-Armstrong. In addition to his gold-glove defense in center field, he’s taken an enormous step forward at the plate this year. He’s currently 1.3 fWAR ahead of Shohei Ohtani’s combined 7.0 fWAR batting and pitching total and 2.3 fWAR ahead of Bobby Witt Jr., the AL’s WAR leader. Behind him, Seiya Suzuki, Alex Bregman, and Michael Busch combine fantastic approaches at the plate with enough pop to make them each extremely dangerous to pitch to. Even though the bottom of Chicago’s lineup doesn’t look so formidable, they excel at getting on base; the Cubs are tied with the Brewers for the major league lead in walk rate but hit for so much more power that the team’s wRC+ is seven point higher than Milwaukee’s.
Probable Pitchers
Updated Stuff+ Explainer
- Stuff+ scores for Mariners starters
Matthew Boyd finally put together a healthy season last year, making more than 30 starts in a season for the first time since 2019. It also happened to be the best season of his career; he set full-season bests in ERA, FIP, and fWAR. His strikeout rate wasn’t as high as it had been earlier in his career, but his walk rate was the lowest it’s ever been, leading to the second highest strikeout-to-walk ratio of his career. A couple of minor injuries have forced him to miss a couple of months of this season and they’ve prevented him from finding his groove. He’s been much less effective across the board with his strikeout rate falling to the lowest it’s been since 2017.
David Peterson had carved out a nice role for himself as a back-end starter and sometimes long reliever on the Mets over the last few years. Unfortunately, like the Mets’ season, everything unraveled this year. His ERA ballooned over six, though his peripherals painted a much nicer picture. The runs kept flowing no matter how good his FIP was, and he was shipped to the Cubs in late June. A groundball specialist, he relies heavily on a sinker to get batters to pound the ball into the dirt. He’s also got a pretty good pair of breaking balls and a decent changeup to round out his arsenal.
An extreme fly ball pitcher, Shota Imanaga’s success is directly tied to his home run rate. Last year, he was tied for the fourth most home runs allowed and he’s already just two homers behind 2025’s total this season. He pitches up in the zone with a fastball with tons of carry and then changes a batter’s eye level with splitters and sweepers down in the zone. The approach works well when he’s inducing swings and misses, but as soon as balls start flying over the fence, he starts to really struggle.
The Big Picture:
The Angels did the Rangers and Mariners a favor by taking two of three from the Astros this week. Los Angeles will get another chance to disrupt the division standings with a series against the Rangers this weekend. The Athletics will get a shot at playing spoiler, too; they’re playing in Houston this weekend.
The Wild Card standings are far too messy to parse clearly right now, suffice to say that the Orioles, who had been holding the final Wild Card spot to start this week, are now two games back and the Twins and Rangers have clambered to the top of the pile for now.
