Chicago Cubs Lineup (4/23/26): Shaw in CF, Amaya DH, Cabrera Starting
Eight wins in a row, huh? The Cubs were 7-9 after their loss to the Phillies last Monday. Since then, they’ve gone 8-0 against NL East bottom-feeders while outscoring them 58-20. That includes the Mets, who finally snapped their 12-game skid to leave the Phillies as the only team with a losing streak longer than two games. You figure the freefall has to stop soon, but I doubt I’m alone in hoping that doesn’t come until at least Friday.
In a quirk of the schedule, all eight of those Phils losses have come to only two teams (Cubs, Braves), and Rob Thomson‘s team will head to Atlanta after this game. The Cubs fly to the other side of the country for three each with the Dodgers and Padres, so they can use as much momentum as they can build here. Edward Cabrera is the kind of guy you want on the mound on getaway day, though his worst start so far came last week in Philly.
The big righty has struggled with contact in each of his last two, actually, giving up three earned runs on eight hits to both the Phillies and Mets. He only struck out four apiece in those as his strikeout rate remains stuck nearly 30% below his career average. His chase and whiff rates aren’t too far off his expected marks, but his curve and slider haven’t been as effective as put-away pitches to this point.
Even though I trust the offense to come through again this afternoon, it’d be nice for Cabrera to show why the Cubs swung that big trade. The Cubs initially put out the wrong lineup on MLB.com, so this is updated. Nico Hoerner is on pace to have one of the best seasons in Cubs history, whether you opt for traditional or advanced metrics, and he isn’t surrendering the leadoff spot anytime soon. Alex Bregman has started getting better results as he stops hitting the ball on the ground so often, giving the third baseman tremendous value.
Ian Happ bats third in left with Seiya Suzuki, who has now homered in back-to-back games, cleaning up in right. Carson Kelly is catching, first baseman Michael Busch — who just hit his first homer of the year last night — now has hits in each of the last three games. If he, Suzuki, and Bregman all get hot…watch out. Dansby Swanson is at short, Matt Shaw is in center, and Miguel Amaya is the DH.
Going for the home team is 29-year-old lefty Cristopher Sánchez, who has been one of the best pitchers in the game through five starts. He earned his team’s last win, then wore a loss to the Braves despite allowing no earned runs over six innings. He has always been a strike-thrower, but his changeup has led the way to much bigger strikeout numbers in the early going.
He also gets tons of grounders from the sinker/change combo that makes up around 80% of his pitches. He’ll mix in a bullet slider that has death-ball-adjacent properties with a little more depth, but he’s had a tendency to pull it out of the zone. The 86 mph changeup is really the pitch to worry about, especially to right-handed hitters.
Sánchez gets a lot of depth on it and tunnels it well with his 95 mph sinker to get hitters to swing over the top or beat it into the ground. He works down in the zone more than any starter the Cubs have seen this year, making him something of a throwback. Many pitchers stopped working low a few years back, fearing that hitters’ greater adherence to creating steeper launch angles would allow them to scoop pitches in the lower third for big hits.
That doesn’t seem to be the case for Sánchez, who has allowed only 24 homers in 68 starts since the beginning of the 2024 season. He has given up 385 hits in just under 412 innings in that time, however, so opponents have not had much trouble putting the ball in play. The Cubs accounted for six of those hits the last time they faced him, with Swanson sending one over the fence. Happ homered against him on July 4, 2024, and Hoerner tagged him on September 25 of that same season.
Sánchez has typically been much better against left-handed hitters, a trend that is very pronounced in this year’s small sample. He’s also been much, much better at home, and a strong wind blowing out to left won’t do anything to help those splits. The Cubs have a 135 wRC+ against southpaws this season, second to only the Dodgers (140), and they’ve won their last seven games at home.
I don’t have a great sense of which way this game will fall, but I fear inevitability might get in the way of pushing these divergent streaks to nine apiece. That said, it seems like Sánchez is due for a rough outing. We’ll find out at 1:20pm CT on Marquee and The Score.
See you at 1:20. ?
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— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) April 23, 2026
