Diamondbacks Travel to St. Louis

Winners of six of their last seven games, the Diamondbacks will go into St. Louis looking to win their third consecutive series.

Arizona will look to Paul Goldschmidt for more big hits to carry the lineup and need a solid performance from their pitching staff.

Despite losing Adam Wainwright for the season, the Cardinals have jumped out of the gates and made a strong statement in the National League Central Division.

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The Cardinals are returning home after splitting a four game series with the Mets and losing two of three to the Royals. Even though the Cards lost their series to Kansas City, St. Louis has one of the best records in baseball at 28-16.

Scheduled to pitch for St. Louis is Carlos Martinez, Jaime Garcia and Lance Lynn while Arizona has Chase Anderson, Archie Bradley and Josh Collmenter on the bump for the series.

The Cardinals are not a flashy team but they are fundamentally sound and possess incredible intellect. They are fifth in batting average (.265) and sixth in hits (406).

Not only do they get the job done at the plate, their pitching has been very solid as well. They lead the majors with a 2.81 ERA and as a staff, they’ve recorded 17 saves which is good enough for 3rd in the league.

With all that being said, the Cardinals have some key players that are banged up at the moment. Jason Heyward missed the last two games with a nagging hip injury while Matt Holiday was a late scratch as well in the series finale vs. the Royals. Jon Jay has been on the disabled list due to a wrist injury but he is eligible to return for game two of this series.

Knowing how solid the Cardinal pitching staff is, the Diamondbacks should still go into this series with the expectation of creating many opportunities for runs and capitalizing on those. The Diamondbacks are in the top five in the league in terms of runs scored (204) and hits (407).

Arizona has a lineup that can give many pitchers headaches throughout the game. That will be the key matchup to watch in this series.

Pay attention to how many opportunities Arizona has to do damage against the Cardinal pitchers. St. Louis does an exceptional job at limiting those opportunities to hitters so it’s imperative that whenever the Diamondacks get the chance, they have to take it.

Overall, the Diamondbacks will have their work cut out for them. To win a series against the Cardinals in Busch Stadium is a tough task but with the way Arizona is playing right now, they definitely have the tools to compete and possibly steal a series from the NL Central leaders.

This will be another series in which the Diamondbacks will be underdogs. They made some impressions in the Chicago series and they will look to accomplish that against another really solid ballclub.

Game one of the series will start at 4:15 ET (1:15 MT). Game two and three will both start at 8:15 ET (5:15 MT).