Isaac Paredes and Shōta Imanaga lead the Cubs to a 7-3 win.

The Cubs have won 7 of 11 after Tuesday’s 7-3 win over the Twins. With a split over the first two games of this series, the Cubs have positioned themselves to have a chance to win a series against a fairly good Twins team. If you dig into numbers, this Twins team is a bit of a conundrum. They’ve piled up a really one-sided record, particularly beating up the White Sox. All teams do this. It should be fairly intuitive that a team wins at the highest percentage against the worst teams. But there is a difference between winning a lot of those games and winning nearly all of them. Two games into this series, this Twins team doesn’t feel as good as their record would indicate.

One of the two central figures in this Cubs win is not something new to Cubs fans. Shōta Imanaga has been the key to the Cubs success all year long. With Tuesday night’s win, the Cubs are now 17-4 when he starts. That corresponds to 39-56 when he doesn’t. For the record, I don’t think either Cubs rookie has much of a chance at the Rookie of the Year. Paul Skenes has so much hype mixed with some good results that I think he will run away with the award. That said, Shōta should absolutely receive downballot MVP and Cy Young votes. Voters don’t often key in on numbers like this. But without him, this team is one of the worst in the NL.

The other key contributor Tuesday was Isaac Paredes. These two were the top two stars and you can split hairs as to which one is 1 and which one is 1a. Isaac’s big night at the plate shouldn’t be a surprise. But, as modern fans so often do, there was a rush to label the trade that brought him to the team a mistake, particularly after he had a little bit of a slow start to his Cubs career. I sometimes wonder what the career of Ryne Sandberg would have been like if he was playing in this era. Never mind that he was a player who fairly seamlessly transformed his career from speed forward to becoming a power hitter. He fairly consistently started extremely slow in April. It would have been exhausting to watch the fans decide he was washed up every spring.

Isaac has barely been in a Cubs uniform for a week and people were already getting restless. To be fair, even with his strong night at the plate last night, he’s only sitting .167/.242/.333 (wRC+ 63). That’s a 33 plate appearance sample. For a guy who is in the lineup most nights, that’s less than 5 percent of a season. If you haven’t gone and looked at his numbers, it bears noticing that he is a .232/.332/.435 career hitter over 1,607 plate appearances. That is a wRC+ of 120. He’s been a bit better than that from the start of 2023 season to present. That makes him one of the most productive third basemen in baseball over that time. I think we forget sometimes how few consistently productive third basemen there are across baseball.

Game 116, August 6: Cubs 7, Twins 3 (56-60)

Fangraphs

Reminder: Heroes and Goats are determined by WPA scores and are in no way subjective.

THREE HEROES:

• Superhero: Isaac Paredes (.307). 2-3, HR, BB, 4 RBI, R
• Hero: Shōta Imanaga (.198). 7 IP, 24 batters, 2 H, BB, 2 R, 10 K
• Sidekick: Dansby Swanson (.099). 3-4, 3B, RBI, R

THREE GOATS:

• Billy Goat: Ian Happ (-.057). 0-4
• Goat: Miguel Amaya (-.041). 0-4
• Sidekick: Pete Crow-Armstrong (-.026). 1-4, RBI

WPA Play of the Game: Isaac Paredes hit a three-run homer with two outs in the first. (.239)

*Twins Play of the Game: Royce Lewis hit a two-run homer with one out in the fourth. That cut the Cubs lead from 4 to 2. (.118)

Yesterday’s Winner: Kyle Hendricks (163 of 179 votes)

Rizzo Award Cumulative Standings: (Top 5/Bottom 5)

The award is named for Anthony Rizzo, who finished first in this category three of the first four years it was in existence and four times overall. He also recorded the highest season total ever at +65.5. The point scale is three points for a Superhero down to negative three points for a Billy Goat.

• Seiya Suzuki/Shōta Imanaga +17.5
• Jameson Taillon +12
• Ben Brown/Mark Leiter Jr. +11
• Miles Mastrobuoni -9
• Adbert Alzolay -10
• Kyle Hendricks -11
• Miguel Amaya -12
• Christopher Morel -20.5

*Paredes up to -3, Imanaga back into a tie for first, Swanson up to -1. Happ down to -4, Amaya drops into second to last, PCA down to -7.5.

Up Next: The deciding game of the series. Looking ahead, the Cubs have an off day Thursday, so they can aggressively use the pitching staff in this one. Javier Assad (5-3, 3.19) gets the start against Joe Ryan (7-7, 3.59). Ryan was a seventh-round pick of the Rays in 2018. He threw six scoreless for the Twins against the Cubs last May.