Again, a welcome home. This time from a middling .500 road trip to Cincy
Intro
The Cardinals return home from a short 4-game swing through Cincy, in which they split that series. Two offensive duds book-ended 2 very complete games where the offense, defense and pitching meshed to produce convincing wins.
Yesterday’s rain delay messed up the pitching plans. It seems like the Cardinals have a tough time overcoming adverse conditions. Weird, because the other team plays in the same conditions.
The 14-18 Cardinals welcome in the 21-11 Mets. The Cardinals would like a chance to re-visit the hard-fought 4 game series the Mets swept from them a few weeks ago back in New York. As revealed by the most advanced metric available (wins and losses), the Mets are very good.
The Pitching Match-ups
The Mets have a somewhat cobbled together rotation, as evidenced by TBD as the announced starter on Sunday. They have several front-line pitchers (Manaea. Montas) on the IL. The movement of Holmes from reliever to rotation is going well, but that balloon will run out of helium in the dog days of summer.
Friday – Gray vs Holmes @ 7:15p (Central)
Saturday – Fedde vs Tylor (not Trevor) Megill @ 1:15p
Sunday – Pallante vs TBD @ 1:15p
I figure the Sunday start will go to Petersen, a lefty.
Quick peak at the Mets pitching
The Mets rotation is uninspiring, but effective. They seem to have focus on high K-rate pitchers and accept the high walk rate that comes with it.
Holmes is a 32-year-old righthander starting the the first time in his MLB career. His underlying metric are strong. K-rate is 27.5%, BB-rate is a tad high at 9.9% and will become problematic if that K-rate drops back any. 55.7% ground ball rate is apt to be very effective against a slow, singles hitting team like the Cardinals. FIP 2.20.
Megill is a Met lifer, with similar underlying metrics as Holmes. High K rate, high walk rate, but with a much lower GB rate, so would be expecting more fly outs and pop outs when he pitches. FIP 2.34.
TBD is likely a lefty, and his underlying metrics are immaterial. Simply name the last time the Cardinals hit a HR off an LHP and you know why this oddly named lefty gets the call.
A peak at the Mets offense
The top end of this line-up is dangerous. Lindor, Soto, Alonso are all MVP-caliber hitters with power that exceeds anything the Cardinals can bring. The lower 2⁄3 of the line-up seems constructed to be problematic and opportunistic enough to swing innings back around to the top. McNeil adds OBP down towards the bottom. These guys do just enough.
Cardinal updates
The bullpen should be in good shape coming into this series. I’m interested to see if there are after-effects to Pozo’s wrist injury on a tag play in Thursday’s game.
On the topic of Pozo, it turns out he has 3 options remaining, so the Cardinals won’t have to expose him when Herrera comes back and he returns to Memphis. He has done well in the role asked of him.