The Chicago Cubs and New York Mets are playing in the NCLS on Saturday night and Game 1 of the series is from Citi Field and starts up at 8:07 pm ET on TV from TBS. The game has Matt Harvey against Jon Lester in the pitching matchup for the National League Championship after NY won over LA and Chicago won over the St. Louis Cardinals.
The series is a best of seven after the best of five NLDS series and the teams have made some changes heading in. The Cubs lost Addison Russell to a hamstring injury and he will be out for the series and now Quintin Berry will take over his place. The team has Jake Arrieta coming in to start after Lester and the team also is bringing Fernando Rodney from the NLDS into this round for the bullpen.
The Mets lost Ruben Tejada after the Chase Utley play and the team is replacing him with Matt Reynolds as an extra option off the bench. The team got solid play from Wilmer Flores and now Terry Collins has another option. The first game is on Saturday and things will continue on Sunday with another night game from New York. The series shifts to Chicago for the middle three games and those will be the first NLCS games at Wrigley Field since back in 2003. The Mets are trying to get back to the World Series after not making it for over a decade, while the Cubs have not been back in the modern era.
Check here for the Cubs and Mets live coverage.
Check here for the box score, play by play, stats and updates from the NLCS.
The Cubs won the season series this season 7-0, but both teams said they feel that will not have much bearing on the game. The Mets had not added Yoenis Cespedes when those games happened and that means both of these teams look very different heading into the playoffs series. Harvey will get game 1 and the Mets have the depth behind him with Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz. The Cubs have Lester and Arrieta as well as Kyle Hendricks and Jason Hammel.
The bullpens should be a key unit for this series and the Mets have depth there as well with Jeurys Familia as well as Addison Reed, Bartolo Colon and Tyler Clippard. Hector Rondon has pitched well for the Cubs and the team also has Travis Wood and Trevor Cahill as options in the bullpen. Theo Epstein has the chance to be legendary just by getting the Cubs to the World Series, as the team has not been there since the 40s. Epstein helped break the streak with the Red Sox and if he wins the World Series here for the Cubs after 100 years, he won't have to pay for anything in Chicago again. Even making it there would be huge. Game 1 is on Saturday night at 8 pm ET.