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The St. Louis Cardinals have gotten off to a terrible start. The bullpen has been a disaster and most of the offense have been ice cold. They’re heading into a weekend set with the New York Yankees off a win, but we will see in Primetime on Sunday if they’re actually on an upward swing. Meanwhile, the Yankees are riddled with injuries, but have gotten back in the win column of late despite a slow start.
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ODDS ANALYSIS
The Yankees saw what Gary Sanchez can do in his amazing run at the end of last year, but the catcher is on the shelf for a month alongside Didi Gregorius. If you factor in some nagging issues and a .050 start for Greg Bird, you’d think the offense would be a problem, but the Yankees have put a 1-4 start behind them, stringing together four wins heading into the Cardinals’ series.
New York’s offense carried the load in those first three wins of the streak, scoring 23 runs, but they got the 3-2 win to close out the Rays’ series on Thursday night.
Aaron Hicks went yard in that game, driving in all three runs while filling in for Brett Gardner who was injured in a collision at first base on Wednesday.
The Yankees are getting production from the proverbial next man up so far. Aaron Judge looks like a different player this year offering plenty of pop while Chase Headley, Starlin Castro and Matt Holliday are swinging well as the veterans.
As for the Cardinals’ offense, it’s mostly just been Aledmys Diaz. The shortstop is swinging well and Stephen Piscotty’s bat is coming around, but otherwise, this offense hasn’t done anything. Matt Carpenter and Dexter Fowler are supposed to be the catalysts, but are hitting .192 and .171 respectively heading into the weekend.
PROBABLE PITCHERS
The grizzled veteran of the St. Louis pitching staff, Adam Wainwright, takes on the enigma that is Michael Pineda in this primetime matchup.
Wainwright hasn’t been the same pitcher since leaving the game on April 25, 2015 after just 35 pitches. He was 2-1 with a 1.44 ERA at that point and was fresh off back-to-back seasons with a top-3 finish in the Cy Young Award voting.
Of course, this wasn’t the first missed season for Waino. He missed the 2011 season and was a bit rough in 2012 before returning to form. He was rough in 2015, ending the year with a 4.62 ERA, but he was still 13-9 and still managed to pitch nearly 200 innings.
There was hope that he’d bounce back in his second season removed from injury, but that hasn’t happened in his first two starts. He’s 0-2 after giving up eight runs—even of them earned—on 14 hits and four walks in just nine combined innings of work.
All in all, he’s still got the grit that allowed him to be so dominant even when he didn’t have his best stuff, but his best stuff hasn’t shown up for a while and grit can only get you by for so long.
On the other side, the Yankees will be tossing an equally frustrating pitcher, but for an entirely different reason.
Michael Pineda gets the start on Sunday Night Baseball after carrying a perfect game into the seventh innings against the Rays his last time out.
He’s now made two starts against Tampa Bay this year with very different results. In his first game, he didn’t make it through four innings, allowing four runs and eight hits. In the second game, he went 7.2 innings of one run, two hit ball. He’s got 17 strikeouts in 11.1 innings, but the Ks have always been there, it’s the homers and hits that’ve also plagued him.
This will be the first time the Yankee has pitched against St. Louis. Typically the unfamiliarity benefits the pitcher, but in this case, it’s all about which Pineda takes the mound for the Yankees. We’ve seen Pineda dominate before and then fall apart.
LIVE BETTING
The Cardinals’ bullpen was a bit better on Wednesday, save for a third of an inning, three hit outing by Trevor Rosenthal. Matthew Bowman and Brett Cecil both got their man while Seung-hwan Oh had a clean ninth.
That’s all fine and dandy, but the numbers are still terrible for this pen. Cecil, Kevin Siegrist, Jonathan Broxton and Oh have all struggled immensely. Until they prove they’re back in midseason form, be weary of trusting this pen to close the door.
The Yankees’ bullpen is a bit more of a sure thing. Aroldis Chapman is still one of the best in the game and Dellin Betances is one of the best setup men. Add in a veteran like Tyler Clipper and factor in Adam Warren’s six scoreless innings to start the year and you really only need five innings from Pineda.
QUICK PICK
Until the Cardinals’ bats string together a couple good games in a row—they’ve had one strong offense performance so far—it’s hard to back a lineup that struggling basically top to bottom, particularly when the bullpen has shown that it needs more than just a couple of runs to work with as they work out their own kinks.
Meanwhile, the Yankees are coming into the series on a four game winning streak. Sure, Pineda is unpredictable game-to-game, but at least he’s coming off a dominating performance so there’s some hope he can carry that over while Wainwright has been beatable now for most than a full season.
The Yankees are hot, the Cardinals are not. At this point, it’s as simple as that as the pitching matchup doesn’t dictate anything different on Sunday. Waino is a big game pitcher and could defy odds on Sunday, but this team is broken on offense, on the mound and on defense, too much needs to change in too short a period of time to jump on the Red Bird’s bandwagon for a Sunday night win.
MLB Odds: Yankees 6, Cardinals 3
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