Chicago Cubs Lineup (5/17/25): PCA Leads Off, Bruján 3B, Boyd Bump Day
The Cubs hung a baker’s dozen on the pope’s beloved White Sox yesterday afternoon, hitting just one homer in spite of the wind howling out all game long. It was a welcome offensive display after more than a few sluggish efforts over their three previous series. We should see more of the same in this one, as winds are blowing out to right at 17 mph with gusts near 30 mph.
Matthew Boyd will need to have that running four-seam working today, but the Sox are among the worst teams in MLB when it comes to hitting lefties. Their 72 wRC+ and six homers when facing southpaws are both close to the bottom of the league, which is in keeping with their overall performance. They managed to get a couple Cade Horton pitches into the jet stream in that loss, though, so Boyd can’t get away with many mistakes.
Not that it’ll matter if the Cubs’ bats come to play again. That starts with Pete Crow-Armstrong in the leadoff spot after a monster game, followed by Kyle Tucker in right and Seiya Suzuki in left. Michael Busch cleans up at first, Dansby Swanson is the shortstop, Moisés Ballesteros is the DH, and Nico Hoerner is at second. Miguel Amaya does the catching and Vidal Bruján gets the start at third base.
Get Matt Shaw back to Chicago yesterday.
They’re up against 25-year-old righty Sean Burke, a former teammate of Shaw’s at the University of Maryland. The 6-foot-6 hurler’s 94 mph cut-ride fastball plays up a little bit due to his 90th-percentile extension, but he’s had a very tough time locating that and his other pitches. With a meager 15.2% strikeout rate and 11.5% walk rate, Burke has trouble putting batters away and keeping them off the bases.
He has also given up eight homers in just 43.1 innings, so hitters have been able to barrel him up with greater frequency than most other pitchers. It’s odd that he’s done a pretty good job of limiting exit velocity given all the other results, and it’s really weird that he’s got a slightly above-average whiff rate when seeing how little chase and how few strikeouts he generates.
Burke will throw all of his pitches to batters on both sides of the plate, but leans more heavily into his four-seamer against lefties and sinker against righties. The slider gets much heavier usage against righties, while the curve is the opposite. That curveball is his only pitch with positive value to this point, which explains why he’s held left-handed hitters to a .209 batting average. But when they carry a .369 OBP, you can see how badly he’s struggled to locate against them.
The Cubs should get plenty of baserunners in this one, and they need to be aggressively hunting both the fastball and slider. The heater will leak out over the middle of the plate, especially against righties, and the slider tends to hang. With those two offerings making up 69% of his pitches, the results have been anything but nice.
First pitch from Wrigley is at 1:20pm CT on Marquee and 670 The Score.
Cubs-Sox. 1:20 PM. @ofcwrigleyfield.
Watch it live on the Marquee Sports Network App. pic.twitter.com/W4WJFU3MHZ
— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) May 16, 2025
