The second half of the only 12-game homestand this season for the South Bend Cubs is coming up this week at Four Winds Field, with the Cubs renewing yet another former Midwest League East Division rivalry. After hosting the Fort Wayne TinCaps last week, the Lansing Lugnuts, Midwest League affiliate of the Athletics, come to town. With their record back to a .500 12-12 on the campaign, South Bend looks to rebound this week and get back towards the first place mark in the West Division.
Even with this past week’s series loss at the hands of Fort Wayne, and despite the Cubs dropping five of six games, South Bend remains just 2.5 games back of first place in the West. The two teams they are trying to catch, Wisconsin and Quad Cities, were dueling each other last week, going back in forth with the wins and losses, because of this, South Bend remains in striking range, and they are a good series away from being right back in first place. Which they were in the last road trip at Dayton.
South Bend without a doubt controls its own destiny as the first half is already almost a-third of the way over with. Hard to believe. Coming up next week, and then in the first week of June, the Cubs will play road series against Wisconsin and Quad Cities, respectively. With a solid series this week against Lansing, the Cubs will hope to take major momentum into Wisconsin.
The opponent this week in the Lugnuts has had an interesting start to the year. Every team in the Midwest League is still in playoff contention, and Lansing is six games back of East Division leading Great Lakes. Despite having a sub .500 record at 11-16, the Lugnuts have a positive run differential at plus-20. They have played an extraordinary amount of close games this season, and a bunch of those have not gone their way. Lansing has already blown five saves this season. But again, they have a top-five team ERA in the Midwest League at 4.65, and their .256 team batting average is also top-five in the circuit. Some numbers just don’t make sense with how they shake out with your record, but the Lugnuts have been all over the place in this first half. The team ERA at 4.65 is impressive too, when you consider the Lugnuts are the only team in the Midwest League to not strike out 200 batters yet as a team. They have 190 K’s from their pitchers, so they get a ton of their work done on the ground and in the air, which considering the low team ERA, also is a head scratcher with all the balls put in play.
It’s funny that the Cubs are seeing Lansing right after Fort Wayne, because of course the two parent club’s on this homestand maneuvered quite the trade last season, with former Lugnut Mason Miller being traded to San Diego away from the A’s, and one of the top prospects in all of baseball, former TinCap Leo De Vries, going back to the Athletics. De Vries had a quick cup of coffee with Lansing last year, and he’s now at Double-A. The top prospect on this team without a double is Devin Taylor, the former Indiana Hoosier.
Taylor will return to the state where he played his college ball, and personally, I called a few of Taylor’s games while he was at IU. Tons of power, a great left handed bat. South Bend will have their hands full no doubt with him. The former Hoosier and the Cincinnati native is batting a sizzling .330 with four homers and 21 RBI. His 21 runs knocked in is tied with South Bend’s Kade Snell, both in the top 10 in the Midwest League. Taylor helped Lansing crush Dayton on Sunday 15-7, and he drove in four runs with a home run as well. Playing all six games against the Dragons, Taylor had hits in five of them and is riding a five-game hit streak. He’s ranked as the A’s number-eight prospect, and if the wind is blowing out at Four Winds Field again this week like it was on Sunday in that 11-10 final, look out.
Lansing also has the services of a few other A’s top 30 prospects in number-16 prospect RHP Steven Echavarria, number-19 prospect RHP Zane Taylor, and number-28 prospect outfielder Nate Nankil.
Echavarria spent all season last year with Lansing and is a former high school draftee of the A’s. He has surrendered exactly three runs in three straight starts, but had a dazzling five shutout innings at Fort Wayne in a win on April 8. Taylor has been tremendous in the rotation for the Lugnuts, coming off a win versus Dayton on May 1 where he went 5.2 shutout frames. And Nankil is an interesting case, playing in Lansing for a third straight season, but he was promoted to Double-A last season, playing 36 games there a year ago batting .243. That’s a more than respectable average for your first taste of Double-A pitching. But he is back to start this season. In 13 games, he is batting .209 with a home run.
Before South Bend was no-hit by Beloit on April 19, Lansing owned the previous most recent no-hitter against the Cubs, back in September of 2022. South Bend went on to win the Midwest League Championship just a few short weeks later.
Players to watch on South Bend…
Kane Kepley, OF: The South Bend Cubs top of the lineup is becoming the old Jimmy John’s slogan “freaky fast” with Kane Kepley at the top, and the newcomer Ty Southisene joining the ranks. What a debut it was for Southisene as well, getting on base four times in Sunday’s wild finish against Fort Wayne. But as Southisene is taking over the two-spot in the Cubs lineup, the lead-off man Kepley continues to do his thing better than just about anybody in the league. Kepley is going to enter Tuesday’s game versus Lansing with the sixth best on-base percentage in the league at .476. He also still leads the circuit in runs scored with 27 and stolen bases with 14. He’s third in the league in walks with 27, and he continues to play outstandingly great defense in center field. Kepley is with no question the best lead-off man South Bend has had since Pete Crow-Armstrong was playing center field every day in 2022. While there are a lot of comparisons between the two, the biggest difference that one can spot is the approach at the plate. Pete was ruthless aggression all the time with trying to find gaps and get to third base as much as possible with triple after triple. Not that Kepley is not trying to do that. He is. But Kane steps up every time seemingly trying to make a defense regret shifting against him. The amount of times that he has lashed line drives or chopped ground balls to an area where an opposing infield is not set up his staggering. He is a master of making the opposing dugout regret their choices. And for as long as he is leading this Cubs lineup, the consistent on-base threat every time he steps up is going to help the Cubs score and score and score some more.
Ethan Bell, RHP: Even though this past series did not necessarily go the Cubs way, the back end of the bullpen shined when Ethan Bell was on the mound. When we talked with manager Daniel Wasinger on the first episode of the Cubbie Corner Radio Program on Sports Radio WSBT this year, it was shortly after Bell saved the Cubs lunch with an amazing performance out of the bullpen in Peoria. The Chiefs were rallying in the 9th inning, they had the tying and go-ahead runs on, and Bell came in and locked the door and secured the Cubs the victory. Wasinger talked about in that interview how Bell had immediately earned a large amount of trust where if Wasi needs a guy, he can go to Bell. The former St. Louis Billiken continued to pile that trust this week, working in two games against Fort Wayne, and firing a combined three perfect innings. He totaled six strikeouts in the two outings, and if you didn’t see him pitch if you were at Four Winds Field, it was probably because you took a quick bathroom break or went to go get a bite to eat. You missed him that quickly. He was in and out of the mound storming through the Fort Wayne order. The two perfect appearances drops his season ERA to a minuscule 1.59 and he will be asked to get some big outs coming up this week in the Lansing series too.
Cameron Sisneros, INF: There is a very exclusive club of hitters that have ever hit a home run that went OVER the Four Winds Field scoreboard. Cameron Sisneros accomplished that on Sunday as part of the three South Bend homers crushed that day. Be it without the help of wind or not, Sisneros absolutely annihilated that baseball. Absolutely crushed it. And he continues to swing a hot stick entering this Lansing series too. Sisneros recently made a physical adjustment with his batting stance, closing the openness of his stance a little, and bringing his hands closer to his blue helmet, as opposed to holding the bat high pointing up towards the sky. This hand positioning of course is going to get him to the baseball quicker. We were marveled with his opposite field hitting ability last season, but the amount of 110-plus exit velo pulled line drives we have seen from him in the last week or so is also staggering. He is pummeling baseballs. And coming off a series where he was on base 14 times in six games, including two homers, Sisneros batting in the five or six spot in the Cubs lineup continues to cause stirs for opposing pitchers with how deep this starting batting order is right now.
Schedule…
Tuesday, May 5- 6:05 PM ET: LHP Cole Reynolds vs RHP Steven Echavarria
Wednesday, May 6 - 11:05 AM ET: RHP Koen Moreno vs RHP Samuel Dutton
Thursday, May 7 - 7:05 PM ET: TBA vs RHP Zane Taylor
Friday, May 8 - 7:05 PM ET: RHP Kevin Valdez vs RHP Kyle Robinson
Saturday, May 9 - 4:05 PM ET: LHP Cole Reynolds vs RHP Tzu-Chen Sha
Sunday, May 10 - 2:05 PM ET: TBA vs TBA
Catch the entire six-game series in South Bend on 96.1 FM and 960 AM Sports Radio WSBT, online at wsbtradio.com, or on MiLB.com with Brendan King and Tyler Reidy on the call.