St. Louis Cardinals: Will anything change at home against the Brewers?

The St. Louis Cardinals have not played well against the defending division champs in 2019. In their first series at Busch, will anything change?

Wait, we have to play the Brewers again? What is this horrible nightmare? The St. Louis Cardinals have had to play the defending division champs too much this early in the season. Starting tonight, the team will start their third series of the season with the Brewers and thankfully it will be at Busch Stadium for the first time this year.

In their first seven games against the Brewers, the Cardinals have gone 2-5 and no offense to the majority of the Brewers team, but the vast majority of games this year have been decided by one man. Christian Yelich may win an MVP this year strictly off of games vs the Cardinals.

Already accumulating a 1.9 WAR, Yelich is batting .500/.625/1.542 with eight homers, 19 RBI’s and eight walks against only the Cardinals. That’s an OPS of 2.167 against us.

More from St Louis Cardinals News

• Cardinals Rumors: 3 pros and cons of signing Carlos Rodon
• Cardinals: Here is Willson Contreras’ first message for St. Louis fans
• How do the St. Louis Cardinals stack up with Willson Contreras?
• Cardinals: The insane asking price the Athletics had for Sean Murphy
• St. Louis Cardinals: Ask me anything with Josh Jacobs – 12/8

Looking more into the numbers though, there is an interesting split that factors in this week. At home, Christian Yelich has hit every single one of his 13 homers. On the road, he has just two of his 31 RBI’s. While he has undeniably been the hottest hitter on the planet regardless of where he’s playing, it’s worth noting that in his nine away games, he has done significantly less damage than in his 14 home games.

So how may that affect the series this week in St. Louis? This is where the rubber meets the road. Which will win, Yelich’s ability to destroy Cardinals pitching or his current inability to hit homers on the road?

The answer will come out soon enough but that is the biggest thing to watch this week in my opinion. Without Yelich and a couple of catches by Lorenzo Cain, the story would be different this year between the Cardinals and the Brewers. The strange thing is that the team hasn’t been bad otherwise, and the Brewers haven’t been out of their minds against other teams.

For example, the Cardinals swept the Dodgers at home last week, then lost two of three to the Brewers. The Dodgers then went in and won two of three from the Brewers. The Cardinals have also won good series against the Pirates, Reds, and this weekend’s games against the Mets. It’s just against the Brewers that we have our lumps.

This is sort of troubling considering that the Brewers are going to be one of the leaders in the NL Central and beating them is going to be kind of a necessary thing if the Cardinals have any hopes to make it deep into October.

Regardless of how this series goes, we can all be happy to know that we will not play against the Brewers again until the middle of August. Thank goodness.

I’m interested to see how the Cardinals approach to Yelich at the plate will change given the troubles he has given us this year. You would think they would’ve learned their lesson about him by now, but we will see soon enough.