The Minnesota Twins return to Wrigley Field for the first time in eight years as interleague play returns to Major League Baseball.
Chicago, behind surprising rookie starter Randy Wells, is a -135 WagerWeb.com favorite for today’s game.
The Cubs, however, enter off back-to-back walk-off losses in Houston. They finished an eight-game road trip a respectable 4-4, but it should have been much better since the Cubs had a 2.39 ERA on the trip.
“Thank goodness our pitching has been so good,” Derrek Lee said. “It feels a lot worse when you’re not scoring runs. We were .500 on the trip, but it feels like it was worse than that.”
The biggest offender has been Alfonso Soriano, who is hitting .157 over his last 19 games. And Milton Bradley was 1-for-13 on the trip and hasn’t homered since May 25. The Cubs are 3-23 when scoring fewer than four runs.
Wells (0-2, 1.86) has the lowest ERA of any rookie and is holding opponents to a .220 batting average yet hasn’t won yet. In his last start, Wells gave up two runs over 6 2/3 innings against the Reds.
Minnesota counters with Kevin Slowey (8-2, 4.21). He has received 7.8 runs of support per start from the Twins — fourth-best in the majors — and is 8-0 when getting more than two runs.
The Twins lead the AL in hitting this month, thanks in large part to catcher Joe Mauer, who is hitting .400 in June. Starting outfielder Denard Span might not play in this series, however. Span missed two games on May 24-25 due to experiencing dizzy spells and fatigue. He began having the same troubles this week and hasn’t played since Tuesday.
The Twins are 5-15 in day games, which bodes very well for Chicago for today’s early start, and 8-18 on grass. The Cubs lead the all-time series 10-8 and are 7-2 in Chicago.
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