Cardinals Return to Busch for I-70 Series against Royals
The Cardinal Chronicle
Cardinals Return to Busch for I-70 Series against Royals
St. Louis, MO
By Ray Mileur
The Cardinals come home with a little road dust on their boots and a little momentum in their bags.
After taking two of three from the Athletics in West Sacramento, St. Louis returns to Busch Stadium on Friday night to open a three-game I-70 Series against the Kansas City Royals, renewing one of Missouri baseball’s familiar cross-state matchups.
The series begins Friday at 7:15 p.m. CDT, continues Saturday at 1:15 p.m. and wraps up Sunday at 1:15 p.m. All three games are scheduled for Cardinals.TV and Royals.TV, with MLB offering a free Cardinals.TV preview in the Cardinals' home territory for the weekend series.
The Cardinals enter the weekend at 25-18, back at Busch after a 5-4 comeback win over the Athletics in Thursday’s series finale. That one had the kind of old baseball lesson managers love and fans remember: stay close, keep grinding and let the ninth inning breathe.
Iván Herrera tied the game with an RBI single, Jordan Walker followed with the go-ahead double, and Riley O’Brien closed it down as St. Louis stole back a game that looked like it had slipped away.
Kansas City arrives from the other direction. The Royals were swept by the Chicago White Sox and come into St. Louis at 19-25, last in the AL Central, carrying a four-game losing streak. The Royals have talent, and Bobby Witt Jr. remains the kind of player who can change a game quickly, but Kansas City is looking for traction after a rough series on the South Side of Chicago.
For St. Louis, the timing matters. The NL Central remains packed tight, with the Cardinals at 25-18, 2.5 games behind the Cubs and virtually even with Milwaukee in second place. In a division where one weekend can shuffle the deck, these are the series a club has to handle at home.
The opener brings a familiar name back to Busch Stadium. Michael Wacha, now pitching for Kansas City, is scheduled to start Friday against Dustin May. Wacha enters at 4-2 with a 2.63 ERA and 42 strikeouts, giving the Royals their best chance to stop the slide. May counters for St. Louis at 3-4 with a 4.85 ERA and 32 strikeouts.
Saturday’s matchup sends Kansas City left-hander Noah Cameron against Cardinals right-hander Kyle Leahy. Cameron is listed at 2-2 with a 5.55 ERA and 32 strikeouts, while Leahy brings a 4-3 record, a 4.31 ERA and 32 strikeouts into the middle game.
Sunday’s finale is scheduled to feature Royals right-hander Stephen Kolek against Cardinals right-hander Andre Pallante. Kolek enters at 1-0 with a 6.75 ERA, while Pallante is 4-3 with a 4.46 ERA and 33 strikeouts.
The matchup also gives the Cardinals a chance to build on what has quietly become one of their better early-season traits: resilience. St. Louis has already won three games this season when trailing after eight innings, tied for the second-most in baseball, and Thursday’s win was another reminder that this club may not always make it easy, but it has not made a habit of folding.
The Cardinals’ lineup continues to be driven by the young core. Walker’s late-game swing Thursday was the headliner, while Herrera’s ninth-inning at-bat kept the door open. Masyn Winn, JJ Wetherholt, Victor Scott II and the rest of the group give St. Louis a different kind of energy than the more veteran-heavy clubs of recent years. It is not polished every night, but it is competitive, and that counts for something over 162 games.
Kansas City, meanwhile, needs length from its starters and cleaner innings from its staff. The Royals’ bullpen has been asked to carry too much during the losing streak, and falling behind at Busch is no way to spend a weekend against a Cardinals club that just came home feeling better than it probably had any right to feel after the seventh inning Thursday.
This is not 1985, and nobody needs to pretend it is. But Cardinals-Royals still carries a little extra weight in Missouri. It is I-70, it is Busch Stadium, it is a weekend series, and both teams arrive needing something. Kansas City needs to stop the bleeding. St. Louis needs to keep stacking wins at home and stay in the thick of the NL Central race.
For the Cardinals, the assignment is simple enough: protect Busch, take care of a struggling opponent and keep the road-trip momentum from being left somewhere out west.
The Cardinal Chronicle, in association with Gateway Sports
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