Bruce Levine, Taylor McGregor and Paul Dzien of Crawly’s Clubhouse Publisher, joined host Cole Wright on Cubs 360 daily to discuss the over/under numbers for Cubs pitchers this upcoming season. 

Jon Lester’s win total for this season is 5.5 and Dzien took the over and believed that Lester will benefit from this.

“He doesn’t have to hold things in reserve. He has a shortened season and I think he’s going to have a great year and I look for Lester to go on the over,” Dzien said.

McGregor agreed with Dzien; however, Levine chose the under for win total with Lester.

“I think I’m going to go under, not that he won’t have a good year. The ERA might be good, the WHIP might be good and everything might be good, but the wins might not be there because the innings to win a game might not be there initially,” Levine said. 

With Craig Kimbrel’s save total at 12.5, Dzien also chose the over with Kimbrel. 

“He didn’t get a normal spring training, he was thrown into the middle of the fire and that hurt him and affected him [last year]. I think this year he’s going to benefit from having a normal spring training as every other player had,” Dzien said. 

The last over/under was 10.5 different starting pitchers being used in 2020 and McGregor wanted to identify what it means to be a starting pitcher in 2020.

“I think you can see some starters by nature be longer relievers out of the bullpen. In a normal season, they still would be starting pitchers but again, there’s going to be some creativity where the guy who actually starts the game might only go three of four innings and then you bring in another ‘starter’ to fill up three or four,” McGregor said. “If you can technically use two starters in one game, then I’m going to go with the over.”