Joe Maddon’s “F Yu” Lineup

Tuesday night is the most important, dare I say, must win game of the Chicago Cubs season. The game will start at 8:01 PM and feature the Cubs Kyle Hendricks verse the Los Angeles Dodgers Yu Darvish.

Cubs fans know how good Kyle Hendricks has been, Darvish finished the regular season holding opponents to one run or less since September 8th. Knowing how tough Yu has been Joe has gone to a “F Yu” lineup in Game 3.

Here is tonight's #Cubs starting lineup.

NLCS Game 3 preview: https://t.co/YgYHeHMzKd #FlyTheW pic.twitter.com/HH7JZ9jsCJ

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) October 17, 2017

There are a couple things that stand out in the lineup. The first is Joe is looking for instant offense with Kyle Schwarber hitting second behind Ben Zobrist and before Kris Bryant. The other is the five left-handed bats in the lineup.

The reasoning behind it is this right here.

Darvish vs. lefties: .262/.325/.453, 16 HRs

Darvish vs. righties: .194/.259/.341, 11 HRs

It isn’t like lefties kill Darvish, but 60 point jump in average, 65 point jump in OBP, and 110 point jump in slugging will hopefully help in getting this Cubs team going. There is certainly grounds for hope here too.

The left-handed hitters the Cubs have in this game are decidedly better verse righties:

Ben Zobrist – .249 AVG (70 points higher) 11 HR
Kyle Schwarber – 27 HR
Anthony Rizzo – .277/.398/.507 22 HR
Jon Jay – 16 2B, 3 3B, 2 HR (only 2 XBH vs Lefties)
Jason Heyward – .338 OBP 10 HR 10 2B

So here’s to the Cubs breaking through tonight with their F Yu lineup, and helping the offense find some momentum to push this series back to LA this weekend.

Jamie Baker

Hi, I’m Jamie and I run this site. I’ve published work on multiple other sites and through that experience I decided to create CHICAGO style SPORTS. We truly aim to speak for the Chicago fan. Additionally, as a member of the IBWAA (Internet Baseball Writers Association of America) you can be assured that all content you read will be written with incredible integrity.

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