The Cardinals series, May 20-22

[Frobby]

The O’s travel to St. Louis to face off in three games against the Cardinals, who are 20-26 but have won 5 of their last 7, winning series against the Angels and Red Sox in the process.  The Cards are 8-12 at home this year, while the Orioles are 12-5 on the road.  The pitching matchups are:

Dean Kremer (3-3, 3.72 ERA) vs. Sonny Gray (5-2, 3.05 ERA)

Kyle Bradish (0-0, 2.63) vs. Lance Lynn (1-2, 4.17)

John Means (2-0, 3.06) vs. Kyle Gibson (3-2, 4.09)

As always seems to be the case lately, we’re getting the best-performing part of the Cardinals’ rotation, but bring it on!  In his career, Gray is 6-6 against the Orioles with a 4.58 ERA.  Last year we faced him twice in a week with diametrically opposite results: he shut out the O’s for 6 innings on July 2 but allowed 6 runs in 6 innings on July 8.  Lynn is 3-2 with a 3.57 ERA against the O’s in his career; we didn’t face him last year.  Gibson has a career mark of 6-2 with a 3.82 ERA against the Orioles; he was with us, not against us, in 2023.

Kremer has only seen the Cardinals once, in 2023, allowing 5 ER in 4.1 IP.  Bradish made his lone start against the Cardinals in 2022, allowing 2 ER in 7 IP.  Means allowed 3 ER in 5 IP last year in his only career appearance vs. the Cards.   So, the Orioles have played a lot more games against the St. Louis pitchers then the Cards have played against ours.  We’ll see how that plays out.

If it comes down to the bullpens, the O’s appear to have the advantage.  The O’s pen has a 3.39 ERA (7th in MLB) and an 11-6 record.  The Cardinals relief corps have a 4.17 ERA (18th) and a 7-10 record.  They’ve done a good job of preserving leads, though, saving 14 and blowing only 5 saves (74%); the O’s have saved 14 while blowing 10 (58%).   The back end of the St. Louis pen has been very good: closer Ryan Helsley has a 1.35 ERA and 13 saves, while set up men  Jo Jo Romero and Andrew Kittredge have a 1.54 and 2.41 ERA, respectively.

Offensively, it’s been a tough year for the Redbirds.   Their 3.80 runs/game is 25th in MLB and their 92 OPS+ is 23rd.  The O’s, who showed signs of emerging from a team slump over the weekend, rank 4th in MLB at 5.02 runs per game, and 2nd in OPS+ at 118.  They’ve outhomered the Cards 68-38.   There are no active Cardinal regulars with an .800+ OPS (Willson Contreras, at .950, is on the IL), but they do have five players over 100 OPS+.  They haven’t gotten much from mainstays Nolan Arenado (105 OPS+) and Paul Goldschmidt (75).   

Seems like we should be able to keep the Cardinals offense to a few runs each night, and we’ll see if our offense is back in gear.   
 

[Mooreisbetter27]

I remember last year against St Louis was incredibly frustrating.  They won the first game 1-0 in a game started by Drew Rom, who we had traded over to them.  Then the second game, the corpse of Adam Wainwright shut us down.  He was throwing junk up there and stymied us for 5 innings.  We won the third 11-5 but we were almost 30 games better than them win wise and I remember thinking 2 out of 3 should be minimum we took all things considered.  Hopefully we pay them back this year with a sweep.  Would like Gibby to have a nice year with a huge blemish due to us in Game 3.  9 runs sounds about right.  

[Frobby]

4 minutes ago, Mooreisbetter27 said:

I remember last year against St Louis was incredibly frustrating.  They won the first game 1-0 in a game started by Drew Rom, who we had traded over to them.  Then the second game, the corpse of Adam Wainwright shut us down.  He was throwing junk up there and stymied us for 5 innings.  We won the third 11-5 but we were almost 30 games better than them win wise and I remember thinking 2 out of 3 should be minimum we took all things considered.  Hopefully we pay them back this year with a sweep.  Would like Gibby to have a nice year with a huge blemish due to us in Game 3.  9 runs sounds about right.  

Your memory is a little off.  We won the first game of that series, not the third.  Our offense was flying high at the time.  Then we lost those two games to Wainwright and Rom, and went into an offensive slump we never completely emerged from. The team lost four in a row (next two were agsinstTampa) for only the second time all year.  Starting with the Wainwright loss, the O’s only averaged 3.57 runs/game over the final 19 games of the year, after averaging 5.17 for the first 143 games.

[Mooreisbetter27]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Your memory is a little off.  We won the first game of that series, not the third.  Our offense was flying high at the time.  Then we lost those two games to Wainwright and Rom, and went into an offensive slump we never completely emerged from. The team lost four in a row (next two were agsinstTampa) for only the second time all year.  Starting with the Wainwright loss, the O’s only averaged 3.57 runs/game over the final 19 games of the year, after averaging 5.17 for the first 143 games.

My mistake!  You are correct.  I had the games reversed.  Thanks for the correction.  

[Frobby]

21 minutes ago, Mooreisbetter27 said:

My mistake!  You are correct.  I had the games reversed.  Thanks for the correction.  

I had to look it up.  I’d forgotten exactly when we played the Cards until your post reminded me.  

[dystopia]

Sweep please. Hate the Cardinals. 

[interloper]

49 minutes ago, Mooreisbetter27 said:

I remember last year against St Louis was incredibly frustrating.  They won the first game 1-0 in a game started by Drew Rom, who we had traded over to them.  Then the second game, the corpse of Adam Wainwright shut us down.  He was throwing junk up there and stymied us for 5 innings.  We won the third 11-5 but we were almost 30 games better than them win wise and I remember thinking 2 out of 3 should be minimum we took all things considered.  Hopefully we pay them back this year with a sweep.  Would like Gibby to have a nice year with a huge blemish due to us in Game 3.  9 runs sounds about right.  

Yes, those two games were brutal ugh. Forgot about that. Especially when it was becoming clear that Flaherty was not going to be great for us. 

Edited May 20 by interloper

[Gunnar]

I think the Cards are better then their record, won't be an easy series. I still expect 2/3 at a minimum of course.

[glenn__davis]

Yeah in a season of very few low points getting shut down by Rom and Wainwright on back to back nights was very frustrating.

[Say O!]

With Goldy and Arenado looking cooked so far this year (of course watch them have huge series against the Os), does STL even have one good offensive player?  I guess Contreras but he is often in/out of Marmols doghouse.

With the way STL season is heading, this series might be firsthand chance to see potential relief corps help via trade market. 

[Just Regular]

GM John Mozeliak did a 15-minute sit down with the local NBC affiliate a few days ago - some of what was discussed was TV revenue uncertainty.   

It was interesting to compare that with the Orioles partnership having the club and network to maneuver with.

 

[Aristotelian]

Less than 2 of 3 would be disappointing. Gray-Kremer is a tough matchup though.

Will be interesting to see how NYY does against SEA after we just took 2/3 from them. 

[interloper]

I'm a little concerned about Kremer's blister and him describing it as "1-ply skin" after its removal. A post-popped blister can be extremely painful and we've seen him grimace in pain from it in his last start. Hopefully it's toughened up a bit by tonight, but we shall see. 

Feel like it would have been easy 10-day IL when Grayson came back, but for whatever reason they opted to not do that. 

Edited May 20 by interloper

[Frobby]

1 minute ago, interloper said:

I'm a little concerned about Kremer's blister and him describing it as "1-ply skin" after its removal. A post-popped blister can be extremely painful and we've seen him grimace in pain from it in his last start. Hopefully it's toughened up a bit by tonight, but we shall see. 

He’s had 3 extra days off, so hopefully that helps.  

[dystopia]

2 minutes ago, interloper said:

I'm a little concerned about Kremer's blister and him describing it as "1-ply skin" after its removal. A post-popped blister can be extremely painful and we've seen him grimace in pain from it in his last start. Hopefully it's toughened up a bit by tonight, but we shall see. 

Feel like it would have been easy 10-day IL when Grayson came back, but for whatever reason they opted to not do that. 

I think for pitchers it's 15-day, but I agree, little surprised they didn't do that.