The St. Louis Cardinals acquired right-handed reliever Dominic Leone and Connor Greene from the Toronto Blue Jays and although Leone is certainly a great pick up, Chicago Cubs-killer Randal Grichuk has been traded out of the NL Central.
The 26-year-old outfielder has had a subpar career, posting a .249/.297/.488 slash line in 1,386 plate appearances. However, for whatever reason Grichuk absolutely killed the Cubs.
Grichuk has a .785 career OPS, but that jumped up almost 200 points against the Cubs. Just ridiculous production against a pretty good pitching staff during the previous three seasons.
That includes a 1.025 OPS at Wrigley Field. His .638 slugging percentage against the Cubs is also the highest vs. any team with more than 60 total plate appearances. And you guessed it, his 11 home runs against the Cubs are the most against any team in the league. So yeah, Grichuk was no longer going to be in a starting role with the Cardinals, but any threat of him killing the Cubs is gone, as he's on his way not only out of the division, but the country too.
Yet, Grichuk isn't the only player to give the Cubs nightmares that's been traded in the past week. The Pittsburgh Pirates traded their ace Gerrit Cole to the Houston Astros and then followed that up by trading Andrew McCutchen to the San Francisco Giants a few days later. So, in one week, three players from two division rivals for the Cubs have been traded. McCutchen has a career .866 OPS, but against the Cubs it's .901. His slugging and OBP are also above his career averages. And Cole was great against the Cubs too, but of course his soul was ripped from his body by Kyle Schwarber in 2015.
So, the Pirates keep getting worse, it's still the Cubs division to lose and Theo Epstein keeps winning even when he's not making moves. Bonus LOL @ Cardinals fans.
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