If you’re staying up late three of the next four nights to watch the Cubs in San Francisco, here are a few things to know about the Giants:

Be patient — 3.90 BB/9

For the Giants, both the rotation and the bullpen are to blame. Both walk more than almost every respective team. And combined, the 3.90 BB/9 is worst in baseball.

It’s also the best way to reach base against the Giants. Opposing teams are hitting only .237 against the Giants, so walking really may be the Cubs’ best option.

The Cubs will miss the Giants’ most wild starter: Jonathan Sanchez. But, besides Madison Bumgarner, who only walks 2.31 per nine, the rest of the Giants’ rotation isn’t much better than Sanchez. Even Tim Lincecum (3.44 BB/9) isn’t having his best season.

As for their hitters, you don’t have to thrown them strikes — 32.4% O-Swing%

Giants hitters swing at a higher percentage of pitches (47.9%) than all but two teams in baseball. So they’re aggressive.

The Giants are probably too aggressive: they swing at 32.4% of pitches thrown outside the zone.

Tonight’s important for Carlos Zambrano, too — 92 MPH

Carlos Zambrano will make his first start since returning from anger management. He has already pitched a few times out of the bullpen, but the Cubs need starters and the Cubs need Zambrano to show other teams he can still be an effective pitcher.

The Zambrano act has worn thing. Some reporters and media people are all but talking about Zambrano era in the past tense. But no matter how badly the Cubs want to move him, no one wants a pitcher making at least $17 million for the rest of his contract who is worth closer to $3 million.

There are a lot of keys to Zambrano making himself valuable again, but one thing we can all see tonight (on TV) and tomorrow (more accurately displayed on Brooks Baseball or FanGraphs) is how hard Zambrano is throwing.

Since 2004, the speed of Zambrano’s average fastball has steadily declined: In ‘04, 92.9 MPH; in ‘05, 92.8 MPH; in ‘06, 92.2 MPH; in ‘07, 91.6 MPH; in ‘08, 91.3 MPH; in ‘09, 91.2 MPH; and in ‘10, 91.0 MPH.

Zambrano says he’s feeling good and that he plans to go back to just throwing hard. How different that is from what he was doing before, I don’t know. Via Cubs.com:

“The last two outings, I just threw the ball as hard as I could. Sometimes I try to be too perfect. That’s not me. I’ve been watching videos and watching myself pitching. I think if I throw the ball and let the ball do the movement and throw as hard as I can — I was throwing with [Carlos] Silva and throwing a four-seamer and the ball was still moving. That’s a privilege, that’s what God gave me. I have to use it.

“Like Larry [Rothschild] said, I have to throw the ball no matter what and don’t try to locate it. It’s good to locate a pitch, but with the kind of movement I have, it’s good to throw the ball and see what happens.”

So how close can Zambrano get to (what I think would be acceptable) a 92 MPH fastball with movement. Cubs fans can learn that; what they can learn from the rest of the season, I don’t know.

In the crucial race for the third place in the National League Central, the Brewers lead the Cubs by a game and a half. So here’s three things, slightly more specific than their hitting is good and their pitching is bad, you should know about the Brewers:

The Brewers’ best are about as good as anyone in baseball — average wOBA is .385.

Only the Nationals have three players (Adam Dunn, Ryan Zimmerman and Josh Willingham) with a higher wOBA (Weighted On-Base Average) than the Brewers’ “Big 3” — Prince Fielder, Corey Hart and Rya … Rickie Weeks.

Oddly enough, Ryan Braun isn’t included in this season’s “Big 3.” Not because he sucks; his wOBA is .348, even if some are concerned about his power. Weeks is just having one hell of a season. His .383 wOBA is second-best for a second baseman, behind only Robinson Cano’s .408. And .408 is crazy good, so Week has nothing to be ashamed of here.

Brewers’ starters are probably not unlucky, just bad — .325 BABIP, but with a 19.9% LD%.

A BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) of .325 is definitely way above the league average. In fact, it’s worst in the league. If the Brewers had the White Sox’s rotation, I’d say they were just unlucky and expect that .325 to steadily decline towards the .300 average. But the Brewers’ starters are awful. Manny Parra, Doug Davis and pretty much everyone who puts on a Brewers’ jersey without Gallardo on the back deserve a BABIP of .325. Actually, it should probably be higher than that.

BABIP is a simple stat that tells you how many times batters reach base when he hits a ball in play, i.e. not a home run or a strikeout. Over time, we expect that number to be close to .300 for every team since that’s usually the league average. This doesn’t apply to pitching staffs that are giving up line drives to nearly 20% of the batters they face. These pitchers deserve all the bad luck they get.

Beyond the “Big 3” plus Braun, the Brewers can hit — OPS+ of 107.

The Brewers’ 107 OPS+ is best in the National League. Still the Brewers sit well below .500. There’s only so much an offense can do, as awful as the pitchers have been.

Odd, but true: The NL Central has the three best OPS+ in the NL (Brewers, Reds and Cardinals) and the three worst (Cubs, Pirates and Astros).

Things are good for the Cardinals. They have their largest lead (1.5 games) in the NL Central since June 20, are recently coming off a seven-game losing streak and are Roy Oswalt’s preferred destination should he be traded.

Now the Cardinals come to Chicago to face their bitter rivals who can’t beat the NL Central. Right now the Cubs are 16-27 against the division.

Pujols is different. Not bad … just different — 3.7 WAR

For Albert Pujols, it’s only been an OK season. At the moment, his WAR (Wins Against Replacement) is 3.7, good enough for 14th in baseball. But 96 games into the season, he’s still chasing his usual numbers.

The last three seasons, Pujols’ WAR has been 8.4 (3rd in baseball), 9.3 (first) and 8.7 (first). He’s gotta lot of ground to make up if he’s going to reach those numbers again. But first he has to catch Marlon Byrd (WAR of 3.8).

Same with Carpenter — 2.1 WAR

Chris Carpenter’s last three full seasons have been great. When he has stayed halthy, he’s finished the season with a WAR over 5.0 each season.

Right now, he’s slightly behind that pace. Fungoes is calling this season a “hybrid” year for Carpenter. There have been games where Carpenter pitches like one of the best in baseball; however, he hasn’t missed bats as often as he
has in the past and Fungoes is concerned with the high number of flyballs.

If Wainwright develops a changeup, hitters should just quit – 7.5% of his pitches are changeups

This season, Adam Wainwright has only thrown a changeup 7.5% of the time, according to FanGraphs. He doesn’t throw it that often, mainly, because he doesn’t know how to. Well, I guess I should say, he didn’t know how to.

He’s been working on the pitch and apparently Tim Lincecum taught him a new grip at the All-Star Game in Anaheim. And Wainwright liked it.

From Fox Sports Midwest:

“Right before I went on the mound to warm up, I got with (Tim) Lincecum on his changeup,” Wainwright said. “I thought he was throwing it one way so I’ve been working on it all year and I couldn’t quite get it. He actually showed me the grip that he uses, and I gotta say, Dave Duncan, I may have a new pitch.”

If Wainwright develops a change, hitters need to chase down Lincecum with pitch-forks and what not. Because if you add a changeup to Wainwright’s fastball and two plus-plus breaking balls (3.11 wCB/C and 3.07 wSL/C both among the ten best run rates in the league), the NL is in trouble.

The Astros are 4-2 against the Cubs despite having only two offensive players, Lance Berkman and Hunter Pence, who are having above-average years offensively. In general, offense has been a tough task for the Astros. Even in their six games with the Cubs, they’ve been outscored 23-24.

Starting tonight, the Cubs have three more games against the lowly Astros. So, here are three things to know about the Houston Astros:

Offensively, the Astros are really bad — OPS+ of 73

The Astros are 13.5% worse than average. Despite all of the Cubs’ struggles, the Astros’ offense is still considerably worse than the Cubs. If the Astros were an individual player they’d be just better than Nyjer Morgan, but worse than Skip Schumaker. The Astros are last or tied for last in every offensive extra base hit category.

Put it all together and you get a team that has an OPS+ of 73.

Throw them anything — below average against every pitch type

FanGraphs has a cool stat where they calculate the runs above average per 100 pitches for each particular pitch type — fastball, slider, cutter, curveball, change, split-fingered fastball and knuckleball.

Maybe a knuckleball would get the ‘Stros’ bats going, because it’s the only pitched they haven’t seen this season. Everything else has baffled the Astros; they are in the red for every pitch. They’ve been at their worst against the slider (-1.63 runs above average per 100 pitches) and the curveball (-1.24 runs above average per 100 pitches).

But even the pitch they’ve done the most with in 2010 — good, ol’ No. 1 — has conquered them overall. So far this season, they are -0.64 runs above average per 100 pitches against the fastball.

They don’t hit a lot, but they are timely — 3.91 Clutch rating

For all of this season’s struggles, the Astros do tend to come through when it matters: they are 3.91 times better in high leverage situations and they lead the NL in Clutch. Unfortunately for their offense, few situations have been important.

Based on the Clutch stat, the Astros are more than twice as good as the next best team — the Phillies. Along the lines of the FanGraphs’ WPA (Win Probability Added) charts, the Astros do well in high leverage situations — an important situation based on the inning, score, number of outs and players on base — compared to how they normally perform.

How Clutch is calculated:

WPA / pLI (a player’s average leverage index for all games) – WPA/LI (how many wins a player contributes to his team with the Leverage Index aspect removed)

On the other end of the Clutch perspective is the Cubs, who are 4.37 times worse than normal in high leverage situations.