The St. Louis Cardinals enter this series with baseball's best record at 18-6. Even after Adam Wainwright's season-ending injury, the Cardinals offense has carried the pitching staff. Wainwright tore his left Achilles batting against the Brewers April 25 and has been placed on the 60-day disabled list.
What to know about the upcoming series:
The Cardinals have the sixth -est batting average in the league at .267 as well as the fifth-best on-base percentage, .334. Matt Carpenter has been the key to the offense leading the team in home runs (4), batting average (.365), and runs batted in (16). In their past six games the Cards have put up 32 runs, winning all six.
Coming into this series, the Cards are 11-2 at home this season. The Cubs look to bounce back after striking out 18 times against the Milwaukee Brewers Saturday and losing a tough one Sunday. Coming into the series against the Brewers, the Cubs had averaged 5.5 runs per game during the four-game winning streak at the end of April. However, since that streak ended they have scored only six runs, averaging 1.5 runs per game.
Jason Hammel explained it best yesterday after his outing about what has been the Cubs' toughest thing to do all season, timely hits when runners are in scoring position:
"What we did in the last series against the Pirates was that we had some two-out knocks," Hammel said. "We had chances today and we got a couple of them in, and left a few out there. It’s a matter of timely hits and we had some today but not enough."
Probable Matchups (2015 stats except for Lyons, who is making his 2015 debut)
Game one: Travis Wood (2-1, 3.04 ERA, 1.06 WHIP) vs. Carlos Martinez (3-0, 1.73 ERA, 1.04 WHIP)
Game two: Kyle Hendricks (0-1, 5.23 ERA, 1.21 WHIP) vs. Tyler Lyons (Career stats: 2-8, 4.62 ERA, 1.22 WHIP)
Game three: Jon Lester (1-2, 4.71 ERA, 1.33 WHIP) vs. Lance Lynn (1-2, 3.07 ERA, 1.19 WHIP)
Game four: Jake Arrieta (3-2, 2.84 ERA, 1.04 WHIP) vs. John Lackey (1-1, 3.69 ERA, 1.26 WHIP)
Predictions:
If the Cubs want to be a contender this season, they must be able to bounce back after bad losses as well as bad series. Call it growing pains or lack of experience, but posting five runs in three games against the league's worst club, the Brewers, is not going to the help the Cubs if they hope to make a playoff run this year. Enough of the past; the Cubs must now look to the present as they play the Cardinals for the second time this season after splitting a pair against them in a rain-shortened opening series at Wrigley Field.
This series has the potential to be a defining moment in the Cubs season. If the Cubs could leave St. Louis winning the series three games to one, it could give them motivation and confidence to have another great month.
Unfortunately, I do not seeing that happening. I will give the Cubs the benefit of the doubt and say they split the series. One thing is for certain though, Jon Lester needs to come to perform this series, as the Cubs need someone to rely on day in and day out -- this provides a perfect opportunity for him to build on his excellent outing last Friday.
Finally, for those not in the Chicago or St. Louis TV markets, Monday night's game will be carried on ESPN.