• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Saint Louis Sports Today

Saint Louis Sports News Continuously Updated

  • Cardinals
  • Blues
  • City SC
  • BattleHawks
  • Colleges
    • Missouri
    • Missouri State
    • St. Louis University

The St. Louis Cardinals are gonna play the Pittsburgh Pirates again – A series preview

June 13, 2022 by Viva El Birdos Leave a Comment

MLB: St. Louis Cardinals at Pittsburgh Pirates
Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

the third series

It is about 500 degrees outside, folks and somehow the St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates are going to play baseball. This is the kind of weather where I take one step outside and immediately feel like I am on death’s door. People are supposed to actually do physical activity in this?

With that said the Cardinals and Pirates are playing four games in this — that includes a doubleheader on Tuesday. Matthew Liberatore will start the first game while Miles Mikolas takes the night game literally because Mikolas sweats a lot.

I wrote an entire paragraph about Zach Thompson of the Pirates. Right before publishing I realized that Zack Thompson was actually the starter for the Cardinals. Gabe even warned about this in his preview back in May. This Zack Thompson is the Cardinals #9 prospect. He made his debut for the Cardinals on June 3 where he gave up one run in four innings pitched. He had three strikeouts and one walk in that game. In his limited time he threw mostly 4-seam fastballs, with a spotty curveball and changeup.

The Pirates starter for Tuesday is Mitch Keller. Keller started against the Cardinals on April 9 and went four innings and gave up four runs on six hits and two walks. He mostly throws a 4-seamer up in the zone with a slider low and away to righties and then throws a sinker, curveball, and changeup the remainder of the time.

On Thursday the Cardinals face off against Roansy Contereas. He is the Pirates #5 ranked prospect. He throws a really good 4-seam fastball with a lot of rise at about 96 miles per hour. He will follow that up with a slider and then occasionally will hang a curveball. He is striking out 28.2% of batters while walking 7.7% and giving up just under 1 run per nine innings at 0.96. His 2.57 ERA is outpacing his 3.24 FIP.

As a team the Pirates offense ranks near the bottom of the league with a wRC+ of 85. The best player this season for the Pirates has been third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes. Hayes has a 113 wRC and has been phenomenal on defense. The best hitter on the team has been Bryan Reynolds with a 115 wRC+, though Tucupita Marcano has been a hot hitter for the Pirates in his 15 games since his debut on April 1. He is batting .311/.367/.511 for a 147 wRC+ in 51 plate appearances.

The Pirates have quite a few players on the Injured List. Catcher Roberto Perez has been there since May 8 and is on the 60-Day IL. Second baseman Josh VanMeter went on the 10-Day IL on June 2. Ben Gamel, Yoshi Tsutsugo, and Jake Marisnick have all been on the IL since May and Kevin Newman has been on it since the end of April.

Matchups:

Monday, June 13 at 6:45 pm CDT: Mitch Keller vs. Zack Thompson
Tuesday, June 14 at 12:15 CDT: Matthew Liberatore vs. TBD
Tuesday, June 14 at 6:45 pm CDT: Miles Mikolas vs. TBD
Wednesday, June 15 at 6:45 pm CDT: Roansy Contreras vs. Andre Pallante

Filed Under: Cardinals

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Analytics analysis: Mikolas gets tons of run support, but never when he needs it
  • 3 standout performances in Cardinals series with Marlins
  • An Open Thread for June 30th, 2022
  • García's homer in 9th lifts Marlins past Cardinals 4-3
  • Blues can move on and keep the faith after Jordan Binnington injury, playoff performance

Categories

Archives

Our Partners

All Sports

  • 247 Sports
  • Bleacher Report
  • FOX Sports Midwest
  • KTVI - Fox2
  • OurSports Central
  • St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  • The Sports Fan Journal
  • The Spun
  • USA Today

Baseball

  • MLB.com
  • Cards Blog
  • Cards Conclave
  • Last Word On Baseball
  • MLB Trade Rumors
  • Redbird Rants
  • Retro Simba
  • Viva El Birdos

Football

  • XFL - BattleHawks

Hockey

  • Bleedin Blue
  • Elite Prospects
  • Last Word On Hockey
  • Pro Hockey Rumors
  • Pro Hockey Talk
  • St Louis Game Time
  • The Hockey Writers

Soccer

  • Coming Soon

College

  • Busting Brackets
  • College Football News
  • College Sports Madness
  • Rock M Nation
  • Saturday Blitz
  • The Maneater
  • The University News
  • Truman's Tales
  • Zags Blog

Copyright © 2022 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in