Series Preview: A very interesting six game home stand opens tonight as the Cardinals take on the surging Pittsburgh Pirates. Rarely are surging and Pittsburgh Pirates used in the same sentence, unless it is to tout the club that the Pirates are playing. But, that is not the case here. The Pirates come in as winners of six of their last seven games and are sniffing .500 these days. The Cardinals come limping home from a 3 – 5 road trip that ended with a very disappointing string of six games. A lot has happened since the Birds left home:
- Jason Isringhause blew two saves and publicly announced that the club could not continue to run him out there in save situations the way he was pitching.
- The starting rotation blew a tire on the road trip, with all five starters turning in less than stellar performances.
- Yadi Molina did his best Showgirls routine at the plate in Milwaukee and probably will earn an Emmy a suspension for delaying the game and showing up the umpires.
- Ryan Ludwick decided to keep Lance Berkman company on the unbelievably hot list.
- Albert Pujols actually let LaRussa write someone else’s name on the lineup card other than his at first base.
This is a big series for the Cardinals because the Cubs are entering a lackluster schedule coming up and if the Cardinals do not hold serve now, things could get ugly in a hurry. Now onto the pitching match ups:
May 13th – Phil Dumatrait (1-1, 3.86 ERA, 1.52 WHIP) vs Kyle Lohse (3-2, 4,87 ERA, 1.44 WHIP)
Dumatrait comes off a nice outing, granted against the Giants, in his second start since moving to the Bucs rotation. Another lefty, the Cardinals did not fare as well against the lefties on the recent road trip. The Cardinals will need to make him work, get his pitch count up and get him out of the game early.
Lohse was been awful in his last two starts. He gave up more earned runs in his last two starts (15) in 1/3 the amount of innings pitched (10) then he did the entire month of April (9 earned runs in 34 1/2 innings pitched). The Cardinals need Lohse to find his April stuff and get back on track. He needs to be a stabilizing force in this rotation because Wellemeyer and Looper, maybe not Pineiro so much, have not shown to be able to throw up a number of consistent outings in a row.
May 14th – Paul Maholm (2-3, 4.79 ERA, 1.43 WHIP) vs Todd Wellemeyer (3-1, 3.56 ERA, 1.19 WHIP)
Maholm has had two Lohse type outings in his last two starts, sporting a nice 9.00 ERA and allowing 21 base runners in 11 innings pitched. Wellemeyer is coming off a decent outing in Milwaukee and is sporting a real nice WHIP these days, which is counter intuitive when picturing a Wellemeyer start. If this guy could only work ahead in the count, he could actually turn out to be a good starter. But he is hell on the bully when he can only work five innings because his pitch count is nearing 100.
May 15th – Ian Snell (2-2, 4.53 ERA, 1.57 WHIP) vs Joel Pineiro (2-2, 4.05 ERA, 1.32 WHIP)
Snell comes off a two-hit, one earned run effort against the Braves, but did walk a season high six batters. Hopefully the Cardinals will be working on a sweep and can work Snell for base runners and for once get them over and get them in. Pineiro comes off a solid effort against the Brewers in a must win type situation against Ben Sheets after the club come off a big loss the night before in the walk off variety. Hopefully he can build off that start and work his ERA back down under 4.00.
May 13th – Pittsburgh 8 St. Louis 4 (10 Innings)
Thanks Matty Mo. For some reason, you felt the need to up and pitch so poorly this season that you could not hang on for another couple of spins around the rotation and got yourself released. The Cardinals ran into Matty Mo’s rotation spot last night and low and behold a lefty was staring back at them, not Matty Mo, and their season record versus lefties dropped to 7 – 9.
Kyle Lohse started well, breezing through the Pirates line-up without any troubles for the first three innings, but ran into trouble in the 4th as Nate Mclouth took him deep after a Freddie Sanchez single to make it 2 – 0 Pirates. It stayed that way until the Cardinals finally solved Phil Dumatrait in the 6th inning. After walks to Brian Barton and Ryan Ludwick, Troy Glaus launched a laser over the left-center field wall to put the Cardinals ahead 3 – 2.
However, Lohse could not stand the prosperity and immediately gave back the lead with some poor pitch location in the top of the 7th, allowing a Ronny Paulino run scoring double and a shoe top laced run scoring single by Jose Bautista.
Albert Pujols then extended his hit streak to twelve games by punching a moon shot to the back wall of section 173 for his 8th home run of the season and we were all knotted at 4 a piece.
The Bucs loaded the bases in the top of the ninth, but Ryan Franklin worked out of the jam with no damage done. The Cardinals did the same in the bottom of the 9th, but Ryan Ludwick felt the need to swing at the first pitch to fly harmlessly out to right field, even though the bags were filled with base runners that had, you guessed it, walked to get on base. (Should I mention the horrible at bat of Brendan Ryan with a runners at 1st and 2nd?)
Ron Villone started and finished the 10th inning, and in between was quite awful, surrendering four runs in a torture filled 30 pitch outing. The Cardinals went meekly in the bottom of the 10th on their way to their 6th loss in seven games.
The was one they really needed to have in order to gain back some of that momentum they had before they ran into issues on the road trip. Now it would appear, based upon the way they are playing, a .500 home stand for these six games would be fortunate. U-G-L-Y.
May 14th – Pittsburgh 1 St. Louis 5
After looking U-G-L-Y the night before, the Cardinals looked much, much better on Wednesday night, earning a 5 – 1 victory to even the series at a game a piece. The much maligned duo of Cesar Izturis and Troy Glaus led the way in the victory with three hits and an rbi a piece. Rick Ankiel and Albert Pujols followed with two hits a piece, and Pujols stretched his streaks (hitting, on-base) to 13 and 41 respectively.
Todd Wellemeyer looked real good again, limiting the Pirates to just two hits while working a batter into the eighth inning. He struck out five and walked three on 106 pitches and lowered his ERA to 3.27, his WHIP to 1.13, and his batting average against to .216.
The defense flashed some leather as well, with Ryan Ludwick making a nice diving catch and Rick Ankiel doing his best Jim Edmonds impression (since Jim struggles to do his own these days. I wish Jim would have just hung up the cleats. It would be said if he went to Wrigley and showed the same type of production he did in San Diego, both in the field and at the plate) by robbing a home run from Adam LaRoche.
Finally, there was an Izzy sighting at Busch as he finished off the ninth in a non-save situation, working a 1-2-3 inning. He showed some movement on this bread and butter pitch, the cutter, and was throwing it at 87, which shows some progress. His curve was also pretty sharp. Maybe he has worked through whatever mechanical issues he was having. Time will tell.
