The St. Louis Cardinals (62-41) will try to survive a five-game series this week in which they've already dropped Game 1 of to the Pittsburgh Pirates (62-42), who are nipping at their heels in the National League Central division. They will play the first of two games today at 4:05 p.m., which can be live streamed here. Cardinals fans can listen to the game on KMOX 1120 while Pirates fans can do the same on KDKA-FM 93.7.
In the 4:05 game, St. Louis will send Lance Lynn (12-5, 3.98 ERA) to the mound to face off against A.J . Burnett of the Pirates (4-7, 2.96 ERA).
The Pirates have shaken off a recent stretch of stagnant offense and managed to stay alive in the NL Central, as Pedro Alvarez clocked his 27th home run of the year last night.
"We're a confident team," said Pirates manager Clint Hurdle. "I think we're a team whose confidence isn't built on its last game. It's not shattered by a losing streak."
The Cardinals are now the slumping team, and cannot afford the slow offense to continue against their top rival right now. Manager Mike Matheny commented on the Cards' power outage saying, "You're going to have times like this in a season. You've just got to keep your head down and keep going and realize that over the long haul guys have done a real nice job producing offensively. That will be back."
The good news for St. Louis is that Lynn has been very good against Pirates stars Alvarez and Andrew McCutchen; the pair is a combined 5-for-30 with nine strikeouts versus the right-hander.
Both teams are fortunate that the Cincinnati Reds are on a four-game slide of their own, and have not taken advantage of their rough patches, but if either the Cardinals or Pirates can win this series handily, it could go a long way toward securing a postseason berth.
In Game 2 of the double header Tyler Lyons (2-3, 5.51 ERA) will go for St. Louis against Brandon Cumpton (0-1, 4.02 ERA).
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