St. Louis Cardinals Face Big Test Against the Chicago Cubs

The St. Louis Cardinals have been playing well lately but are about to face their biggest test of the early season. Will they stay hot against the Cubs?

Since the sweep at the hands of the Pittsburgh Pirates the St. Louis Cardinals have gone 7-2 against Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati. These are three teams that will be near the bottom of the standings all season long and the Cardinals treated them like that scoring a total of 78 runs in those nine games.

With that said, the Cardinals will go up against the 9-3 Chicago Cubs who had yet to lose a series until the series they just played against the Colorado Rockies. Until that series the Cubs were 8-1, and were riding high despite the loss of Kyle Schwarber to a devastating knee injury in the second game of the season.

Game 1 – Leake (0-1, 6.97 ERA) vs. Lackey (2-0, 5.68 ERA)

Game 1 of the series will be a matchup of Mike Leake vs. former Cardinal John Lackey. This will be quite the interesting game as it will be the first time John Lackey and Jason Heyward return to Busch Stadium since Game 2 of the NLDS against these very same Chicago Cubs.

Leake has not looked sharp in his two starts so far, and he will be looking to get the ball down and trust on his (unreliable) infielders to get the outs for him. Leake is not your flashy kind of pitcher, he is much like many Cardinals’ pitchers in the Dave Duncan era in that he needs to have the ball down and get ground balls to be successful.

Leake will be doing this against a Cubs team that owns a .403 slugging percentage against him in his career. Specifically, Anthony Rizzo has performed well against Leak as he has a .333 average with two homers in 30 at-bats.

With the way the ball has been flying at Busch Stadium lately, it is going to be even more important to keep the ball down against the Cubs’ potent lineup, that already has 13 homers this season.

Next: Game 2