St. Louis @ Cincinnati preview
Great American Ball Park
Last Meeting ( May 15, 2010 ) St. Louis 3, Cincinnati 4
The Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals will once again play for first place in the National League Central Division when they meet today in the rubber game of their three-game series.
The teams swapped 4-3 victories in the first two games of the series, with both losing teams threatening after scoring a run in the ninth inning.
The Cardinals’ Brad Penny squares off with the Reds’ Bronson Arroyo in the series finale.
Penny features the superior statistics. He’s sporting a 1.70 earned-run average this season through seven starts, fifth-best in the National League.
The veteran right-hander, who turns 32 on May 24, has not allowed an earned run in three of his starts or yielded a walk in four. He’s 7-3 lifetime against the Reds.
But Penny has also been a victim of non-support. The Cardinals have scored as many as four runs in a game in only one of his starts and more than two runs just twice.
Arroyo will try to keep that streak alive and hand Penny his fourth straight loss by continuing to display the pinpoint control that Cincinnati’s starting pitching staff has recently mastered.
In his last start, Arroyo walked only one hitter in a 2-1 victory at Pittsburgh last Monday. No Reds starting pitcher has unintentionally walked more than two batters in their last seven games.
Perhaps that’s why the Red have taken six of those contests, along with the fact they have not committed an error in 10 games.
St. Louis, meanwhile, has seemed to live off home runs this season and have been less apt to manufacture runs. Witness the fact they lost Saturday’s game when Scott Schumaker was thrown out at the plate for the game’s final out.
The Cardinals were 2-7 coming into the series and did not hit a home run in any of those nine games. While they have hit three home runs in this series, hitting coach Mark McGuire has spoken of trying to change his team’s philosophy, wanting players to target a location in the strike zone rather than looking for certain pitchers to hit.
This could be the key for the Cardinals today against Arroyo. The veteran right-hander succeeds not so much with overpowering stuff but by spotting his pitches from different throwing angles.
Penny and Arroyo squared off on April 8, with the Reds winning 2-1 on Jonny Gomes’ game-ending home run off Jason Motte.