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Alright boys, today is the third & final game against the Cubs at Wrigley. The Sox will be going for the sweep this afternoon after winning game two by a score of 7-4 despite a pitching matchup that heavily favored the Cubs on paper. The Sox’s offense exploded for another five HRs last night, three of which came from Abreu giving him an AL leading 10 on the year. We have now won seven straight behind a group of hitters that lead all of baseball in fWAR. Unfortunately, wins by the Twins & Indians keep us a game back from the Central lead, but both clubs should terrified by what the Sox are doing right now as this offense is going to a real problem for years to come. On the mound today for the Sox is Dylan Cease, who has a 4-1 record on the season despite an ugly looking 6.16 FIP. As mentioned previously, poor command is really hurting him this year as he’s been unable to hit his spots and is too often falling behind in the count (his first pitch strike % is 5 points worse than league average). This has resulted in a 15th percentile K rate (6 per 9) and a propensity to give up the long-ball when missed over the plate. For Cease it all starts with the four seamer and if he can locate that pitch better, he’ll quickly find favorable spots to leverage his slider & changeup which have been effective this year in generating whiffs. At some point it’s going to click for him and perhaps facing the team that drafted him will bring the best out of Dylan today. For the Cubs today will be Yu Darvish, who sits at 4-1 on the season with a 2.02 FIP. When this guy is on he is an absolute monster and that appears to be the case this year. Darvish has a monster of a repertoire, with StatCast showing at least six different pitches thrown this year and with some of them having various off-shoots (including hard & soft versions of his cutter). Almost all of them are of high quality, with his cutters, four seamer, slider, & curves all generating whiff rates above 28%. His cutter in aggregate is ranked as one of the best in the game (FG has it 3rd overall) and he now uses the two versions of it over 50% of the time (up from 15% just two years ago) to setup his array of breaking balls. No matter how you slice it, this dude is going to be a real challenge for us today. That being said, his BB/9 & HR/9 rates are not sustainable and if our guys can lay off the junk outside of the zone (easier said than done), we may set ourselves for some walks and hopefully a few mistakes in the zone. Looking at the matchup data, Edwin is the only guy who has faced Yu a material amount of times (25 plate appearances) and actually has a 1.059 OPS against him. For better or worse, I’d roll with him at DH today and start Abreu & McCann at 1B & C respectively as both are hot right now and each have a bomb off Darvish (SSS admittedly). I hate leaving Yasmani on the bench and I’m sure people will call me crazy, but I want to maximize our chances of putting any Darvish mistakes in the bleachers and that means rolling the dice on Edwin even if Grandal is probably the safer play. Let’s fucking go boys!!!!!!!!