Chicago Cubs at San Francisco Giants

First pitch is 12:10 PM PT, and the Cubs have a chance to walk out of San Francisco with a sweep after taking the first 2 of this series 5-1 and 6-1. Ryan Rolison and his 2.25 ERA draw Logan Webb, who is somehow sitting at 3-4 despite pitching like one of the better arms in the National League.

Webb's last time out was the kind of start that makes a manager want to throw a chair: 8 innings, 1 earned run, 7 strikeouts, 0 walks, 99 pitches against the Nationals on June 8. The bullpen blew it for him. He has allowed just 2 earned runs across his last 3 starts and the Giants still lost most of them, which is basically the 28-43 season in a sentence.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
CHC	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	7	0
SF	0	0	0	0	3	0	1	1	—	5	9	1

The Cubs have hammered the Giants for 11 runs in 2 games and are getting career-best contact from Pete Crow-Armstrong, who took an 11-game hit streak into the weekend with Statcast numbers (91.9 avg EV, 50.9% hard-hit) that look nothing like the 2025 version of him. The bigger Chicago concern is Seiya Suzuki, who left Saturday grabbing the same right knee he sprained at the WBC in March. Craig Counsell called the early word "positive," but it is still worth tracking before lineups drop.

The starting rotation behind Rolison is held together with tape — Justin Steele, Cade Horton, Jameson Taillon and Matthew Boyd are all on the IL, with Steele and Taillon out until after the All-Star break. That makes a Rolison-Webb matchup carrying obvious run-prevention weight even more important if the Cubs want to keep grinding out series wins instead of bullpen games.

The Giants are playing the worst baseball in the division, with Heliot Ramos (quad) and Harrison Bader (10-day IL) still out of the lineup and Tyler Mahle gone from the rotation. Webb is essentially the lone reason to tune in on their side most nights. If he gives them 7 again and they finally cash it, that is the only sweep-stopper San Francisco has on the menu.

Sources