{"id":660873,"date":"2026-04-03T14:22:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/660873\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T14:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T14:22:15","slug":"series-preview-cubs-at-guardians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/660873\/","title":{"rendered":"Series Preview: Cubs at Guardians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Cubs and Guardians will play a (hopefully) three-game series at Progressive Field this weekend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">So far in this young season, the Cubs are 3-3, 14th in wRC+ at 100, fifth in baserunning runs at 1.1, 11th in Defense at 0.1, ninth in ERA at 3.50, and 7th in SIERA at 3.17. The Cubs have played the Nationals and Angels.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Guardians are 4-3, 26th in wRC+ at 79, 25th in baserunning runs at -0.6, 16th in Defense at -0.7, 15th in ERA at 3.98 and 9th in SIERA at 3.38. The Guardians have played the Mariners and the Dodgers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Game One, Friday, 4:10PM ET: Probably Cade Horton, RHP vs. Joey Cantillo, LHP<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Game Two, Saturday, 7:15PM ET: Probably Shota Imanaga, LHP vs. Slade Cecconi, RHP<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Game Three, Sunday, 1:40PM ET: Probably Edward Cabrera, RHP vs. Parker Messick, LHP<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The big question for this series will be if the teams can dodge enough rain to get all three games in. Otherwise, Guardians fans hope Chase DeLauter is back, Bo Naylor and Kyle Manzardo show up for this series and Jose Ramirez builds off of his homer in the Dodgers\u2019 series\u2019 finale.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">I will also be monitoring if Cade Smith can locate one secondary pitch and get back to his usual dominance. Let\u2019s go, Guardians!<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">wRC+ &#8211; Weighted Runs Created Plus &#8211; A measure of determining a player\u2019s run production value while controlling for park effects. 100 is league average.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Baserunning Runs Above Average &#8211; A metric including stolen base value, double-play avoidance, and taking extra bases to determine how many runs above average a team is on the basepaths<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Defense &#8211; This stat gives you how many runs above average a team\u2019s defenders save their team, adjusted for positional value (i.e. a catcher has far more defensive value for a team than a first baseman).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">SIERA &#8211; A metric to determine a pitcher\u2019s true ERA based on strikeout rate, walk rate, and quality of batted-balls given up. This number is similar to ERA (3 and under is excellent) in determining player performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cubs and Guardians will play a (hopefully) three-game series at Progressive Field this weekend. So far in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,2589,2565,538,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-660873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-guardians","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-guardians","11":"tag-cleveland-guardians-analysis","12":"tag-clevelandguardians","13":"tag-guardians","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116341227164835500","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}