Thursday St. Louis Cardinals -130

My initial reaction to seeing the Cardinals switch to left-hander Jaime Garcia was that this guy may be going on irregular rest and I thought I remembered some recent struggles after an amazing start to the season. 

 Garcia had not pitched as well lately , but I was see just how dominant he was the first six weeks of the season. Garcia was 5-0 with a 1.89 ERA on May 12. There is nowhere to go but down from there. He is now 6-3 with a very good 3.06 ERA. While he has not been as dominant lately I would not go as far as to label him a struggling pitcher. He is 0-2 with a 3.09 ERA in his last four starts. There are not a lot of pitchers in the league who can pitch to a 3.09 ERA in a four game stretch and it raises your ERA.

The simple facts are that Garcia's numbers are still very good as he has walked just 26 batters in 100 innings pitched while striking out 88, good for a better than three to one strikeout to walk ratio and has surrendered just five home runs in 16 starts. He has not pitched since June 25 so rest is not an issue.

Oriole’s left-hander Brian Matuszz started the season on the DL and did not make a start for the birds until June 1. He is 1-3 with a horrid 6.85 ERA in five starts this season. Matusz is on a personal three-game losing streak in which he has posted an 11.12 earned run average. Matusz was banged around for six runs and nine hits through 4 2/3 innings of a 10-5 loss to Cincinnati last Saturday

Matusz numbers have been awful everywhere and if not for the fact the Orioles are going nowhere he likely would have been sent back to the minors to figure things out. He has allowed 31 hits in 22 innings pitched and walked 10 batters as well. So he has allowed 41 base runners not including errors in 22 innings. This is topped off by the fact that he has allowed seven home runs in five starts and all seven home runs allowed have come in his last four starts.

Matusz's only win of the season came against the offensively challenged Oakland A's and he has yet to pitch six innings in any start this season. Matusz will not catch any breaks tonight as the Cardinals are second in the NL in runs scored and first in the NL in team batting average.

 Take the Cardinals to complete the three game sweep of the struggling Orioles and there young pitcher Matusz who may likely end up back in the minor leagues after this one.

BOL 

LaRussa has not announced the Cardinals lineup yet. He has been known to be slow to announce his starting lineups everyday so this is nothing new and it is still almost four hours till game time. I would not expect any unusual changes to the lineup tonight. Holiday has only been back from DL for less than two weeks and would unlikely to get a day off. The only possible change could be Berkman, who is a lefty and occasionally sits against lefties. I would expect normal lineup today.  All said ML for me BOL

Quote Originally Posted by TDHCentral:



Ha...I'm a woman..thought everyone knew by now, but I still want this Cards win.  I got cards Ml and cards 1st five inn

 but I sometimes  I call my wife BRO,  RED BIRDS