Last night’s win was a bit too close for comfort, especially considering it was against a potentially historically bad team a day after another close win over said team. But unless you stake your assessments on run differential, a win is a win regardless of who it comes against by how much. And so, the Cubs now have a chance at another sweep after walking the Rockies off in the second game.
Matthew Boyd pitched a bit of a stinker last time out against Cincinnati, giving him just two rough starts on the season. That most recent effort was his shortest of the season at just four innings, the first time he failed to complete five, but he still needed 93 pitches to grind it out. The Reds collected eight hits and struck out only three times, so it was just one of those games where the stuff wasn’t very sharp.
Boyd got the benefit of a massive offensive outburst in the late innings to take him off the hook for a loss, and now he gets a weaker opponent. He’s typically done a very good job of overcoming little mistakes to keep his team in the game, so getting back to more of the same there is what we’re looking for tonight.
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Ian Happ leads things off tonight playing left field, Kyle Tucker is in right, Seiya Suzuki bats third as the DH, Pete Crow-Armstrong is playing center, and Carson Kelly is behind the dish. Michael Busch is at first, Dansby Swanson is at short, Nico Hoerner is playing second, and Matt Shaw is at third.
They’re up against 27-year-old Tanner Gordon, a Champaign, IL native who doesn’t figure to be popping any corks as long as he remains with the Rockies. We do have to give him some credit for defecting to IU and the real Assembly Hall. Gordon has been up and down between Triple-A this season and has made just two MLB starts, both against very tough teams in the Tigers and Yankees. Now he gets one of the league’s most prolific offenses, so that’s super fun for him.
He’s done a very good job despite the uphill climb, allowing six earned runs and striking out nine with three walks. That said, Gordon has never put up better than a 4.31 ERA above A-ball because he’s a strike-thrower who doesn’t miss many bats with his 92 mph fastball. That four-seam works more like a sinker, getting more depth and run than most, and it’s done okay for him so far. It has to when it makes up half of his pitches.
The rest are almost evenly divided between a cutty changeup at 84 mph and a death ball-esque slider at 86, then he’s got what appears to be a seldom-used knuckle curve. The movement profile is similar enough to the slider to make me wonder whether it’s a classification error, though it’s thrown at a little less than 80 mph. That means he’s probably not spiking it at all, but it still lands in that zone typically associated with death balls.
Gordon has pitched to massive reverse splits over his brief MLB experience, allowing a .388/.423/.714 slash line to right-handed batters. Those numbers are all at least 48 points higher in 2025, but he’s stymied lefties to keep things in check. Gordon has never faced any current Cubs, and he’s only pitched at Coors Field so far this year, so perhaps lack of familiarity and a different ballpark will work in his favor.
First pitch is at 7:05pm CT on Marquee and 670 The Score.
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