Chicago Cubs Lineup (5/2/25): Kelly Cleanup, Lopez at 3B, Brown Starting
The Cubs just wrapped up their first series against an NL Central opponent, taking two of three from the Pirates in Pittsburgh. Now the face a slightly tougher test in Milwaukee against a Brewers team that just fell back to .500 with a loss yesterday. This weekend won’t determine the outcome of the division, but putting some distance between themselves and a perennial thorn in their sides sure would be good for the Cubs.
Ben Brown is on the bump for the series opener as he seeks to find a combination of efficiency and consistency. He’s been unable to go deep in games because he’s struggled with command in most of his five starts, leading to too many walks and too much contact. Bad luck has beaten him up to the tune of a .413 BABIP, though some of that is tied to his execution.
Because he frequently gets behind in counts and only has two pitches, hitters are able to sit dead-red far too often. His curveball has been largely ineffective as well, though he does lead MLB with 13 swords generated this season. That doesn’t put him on par with Hattori Hanzo, but maybe he can make like Beatrix Kiddo against the Brew Crew tonight.
Should Brown struggle or just run up his pitch count early, Craig Counsell will likely turn to recent call-up Chris Flexen. The veteran righty carved up Triple-A batters for Iowa after lowering his extreme over-the-top arm slot a few degrees and swapping his sweeper for a bullet slider. I have to think front office Swiss Army knife Tyler Zombro had something to do with that, as he’s big on tailoring pitch repertoires to arm slots. Trying to create big horizontal movement from such a steep angle wasn’t a great idea, so it’s good that Flexen is using that approach angle to his advantage.
Zombro is also one of the people responsible for proselytizing the kick-change, a pitch believed to have been created by veteran righty Shaun Anderson and named by Tread Athletics Assistant Director of Performance Leif Strom. Given how infrequently Brown throws his changeup — 12 times all season — and how poorly it’s performed, he may need to shake things up with the pitch. It’s possible he already has, but seeing how much less depth it gets compared to average offspeed pitches indicates he’s still using more of a traditional grip.
Going with more of a two-seam orientation and spiking his middle finger might allow him to kick the ball’s axis into more side spin, yielding a good deal more depth and possibly killing a little velocity as well. Maybe he’s tried that and it just didn’t work for him, but something probably needs to, uh, change here.
How about the bats stay hot and make sure Brown can pitch with a lead? Ian Happ, Kyle Tucker, and Seiya Suzuki are all in their standard spots, then it’s mashing Carson Kelly cleaning up and catching. Michael Busch is at first, Nico Hoerner is at second, Pete Crow-Armstrong is in center, and Dansby Swanson is at short. Nicky Lopez gets his second start in a row at third base because why play Jon Berti and his 110 wRC+ and seven stolen bases when you can use a guy with even less power and 11 steals in his last 717 games?
Lopez does have a better glove at third, which has been a trouble spot all season, and the platoon matchup is in his favor. The frustrating part is that the Cubs are choosing between players with an aggregate ISO somewhere around .085 (league average is .150) at a position expected to provide power. That aspect of it clearly hasn’t hurt yet, so it remains merely perplexing for the time being.
Tyler Alexander is listed as the starter for the Brewers, but he’s just the opener. The bulk man is 24-year-old Quinn Priester, who is with his second NL Central organization after coming up with the Pirates. He’ll have to join the Cardinals next if he wants to have a shot at the papacy in the future. This will be Priester’s second game against the Cubs, the first of which also came as the bulk pitcher for Pittsburgh on September 19, 2023. The Cary, IL native was acquired from the Red Sox less than a month ago and has worked almost solely as a starter in the minors, shifting to long relief for some of his limited MLB action.
Not much of a strikeout guy, Priester has just 82 punchies in 118.2 career innings. His control has been poor through four starts this season, with 12 walks and 13 Ks over 19 innings. His strength is the ability to spin the ball, resulting in above-average results with the slider and curve. Since he doesn’t miss many bats, those pitches serve to get ground balls at a 56.7% clip that puts Priester in the 90th percentile. However, having so many balls put in play against him means a lot of them are going to find holes.
His heavy sinker comes in at 93.3 mph but doesn’t possess any particularly outstanding qualities, so the Cubs shouldn’t have trouble getting to him. Their patient approach should work well based on his propensity for free passes, so this could come down to them pushing runs across without the benefit of the longball. Priester has only given up one homer so far, and that came in Colorado.
He’s split-neutral this season but has been hammered by lefty batters in the past, so we’ll see how that works out this evening. This feels like a matchup the Cubs should be able to exploit early and often, which means they’ll probably be shut out for the first five innings.
First pitch from Milwaukee is at 7:10pm CT with TV coverage exclusively on Apple TV+ and the radio broadcast on 670 The Score.
The start of three in Milwaukee. pic.twitter.com/TCju7X4k6I
— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) May 2, 2025
