Series Preview: Cardinals Take Their Wild Card Push Into Wrigley Field
THE CARDINAL CHRONICLE
Series Preview: Cardinals Take Their Wild Card Push Into Wrigley Field
St. Louis, MO
By Ray Mileur
The St. Louis Cardinals head to Wrigley Field this weekend for three games against the Chicago Cubs with considerably more on the line than another chapter in one of baseball’s oldest rivalries.
The Cardinals are playing meaningful baseball again.
St. Louis enters Friday at 61-60, above .500 and three games behind the final National League Wild Card position. After stumbling badly coming out of the All-Star break and selling at the trade deadline, the Cardinals have quietly put themselves back into the postseason picture by doing something rather simple.
They started winning series.
Three straight, in fact.
The latest came against the Philadelphia Phillies at Busch Stadium, where St. Louis rebounded from a frustrating loss in the opener to take the next two games, including Wednesday’s convincing 7-1 victory.
Now comes a considerably different test.
Chicago enters the weekend at 71-51, sitting second in the National League Central and firmly positioned in the postseason race. The Cubs are four games behind Milwaukee in the division and have been one of the National League’s most consistent clubs.
They are also familiar.
Very familiar.
The Cardinals and Cubs have already played 10 times this season, and neither club has been able to claim an advantage.
The season series is tied 5-5.
That makes this weekend simple.
Whoever wins two of three at Wrigley Field wins the 2026 season series.
For the Cardinals, it could mean considerably more.
This is no longer about trying to catch the Cubs in the division. A 10½-game gap makes that an unrealistic target with six weeks remaining.
The Wild Card is the race.
And suddenly St. Louis is back in it.
The Cardinals have gone 7-3 over their last 10 games, and what appeared to be a season drifting toward another long September has taken an unexpected turn.
Perhaps there is a lesson somewhere in that.
The front office sold at the trade deadline.
The players did not.
Dustin May and JoJo Romero were traded to Milwaukee. Lars Nootbaar was moved to Arizona. The roster became younger, the future became a greater priority and expectations for the final two months were understandably reduced.
Then the Cardinals started playing better baseball.
Andre Pallante has emerged as one of the better pitchers in the rotation.
Kyle Leahy continues to provide quality innings.
JJ Wetherholt has continued an impressive rookie season.
Jordan Walker and Alec Burleson remain central pieces of the offense.
Iván Herrera continues to provide an important bat.
Nathan Church, César Prieto, Jimmy Crooks and others are receiving opportunities that might not have existed before the deadline.
There is something refreshing about watching young players compete without being told the season no longer matters.
Development should never become another word for accepting losing.
The Cardinals have 41 games remaining.
Three games out is not buried.
Three games out is a pennant race.
Friday afternoon’s series opener will feature Matthew Liberatore against Cubs right-hander Clay Holmes.
First pitch is scheduled for 1:20 p.m. CT, with the game carried nationally on Apple TV.
Liberatore enters at 5-9 with a 5.15 ERA and 110 strikeouts.
The season has remained a frustrating mix of flashes and inconsistency.
There are innings when Liberatore looks capable of dominating a Major League lineup. His breaking ball generates swings and misses, his fastball plays when he commands it and his ability to strike hitters out has never really been the question.
The difficulty has been putting everything together for six or seven innings.
One bad inning has too often changed an otherwise competitive start.
At Wrigley Field, that becomes particularly dangerous.
The wind, the dimensions and the Cubs’ ability to produce extra-base damage mean Liberatore cannot spend the afternoon pitching from behind in counts.
He must attack.
Strike one remains his most important pitch.
When Liberatore gets ahead, the entire arsenal becomes available. When he falls behind, Major League hitters can eliminate the breaking ball and wait for something they can drive.
Chicago will counter with Holmes, who enters at 4-5 with a 2.86 ERA.
That ERA alone tells the Cardinals what kind of afternoon they could be facing.
St. Louis cannot afford another game in which the offense waits five or six innings before applying pressure.
The Cardinals have played better recently because they have begun producing more complete offensive innings rather than relying on one hitter to solve everything.
That was evident Wednesday against Philadelphia.
St. Louis scored four times in the fifth inning and continued adding on rather than asking the bullpen to protect another one-run lead.
That formula needs to travel.
Wetherholt must continue creating traffic near the top of the lineup.
Herrera and Burleson must provide quality at-bats behind him.
Walker remains the hitter capable of changing a game with one swing, but he becomes considerably more dangerous when someone is standing on base in front of him.
The Cardinals also need continued production from the bottom half of the lineup.
Masyn Winn, Church, Prieto, José Fermín and Crooks do not all need to become middle-of-the-order hitters.
They need to extend innings.
Put the baseball in play.
Take a walk.
Move a runner.
Turn the lineup over.
That is winning baseball, particularly against good pitching.
Saturday afternoon may provide the Cardinals their most favorable pitching matchup of the weekend, although there is nothing particularly easy about facing this Cubs rotation.
Michael McGreevy will start for St. Louis against left-hander Matthew Boyd.
First pitch is again scheduled for 1:20 p.m. CT.
McGreevy enters at 4-9 with a 3.64 ERA and 85 strikeouts.
His record remains one of the more misleading numbers on the Cardinals roster.
McGreevy has pitched considerably better than four wins would suggest. He does not overpower hitters, but he changes speeds, commands the strike zone and generally keeps the Cardinals in games.
That matters.
There remains a tendency in modern baseball to judge starting pitchers by radar-gun readings before looking at whether they actually get hitters out.
McGreevy gets hitters out.
He pitches.
There is still value in that.
He will need every bit of his command against a Cubs lineup that has punished mistakes throughout the season.
Chicago enters the series with a plus-108 run differential and has scored more than 630 runs. The Cubs can produce damage throughout the lineup and have repeatedly shown the ability to turn one mistake into a large inning.
Pete Crow-Armstrong remains one of the most dynamic players in the National League.
Alex Bregman has added another dangerous veteran bat to the middle of the order and recently produced a three-home run, seven-RBI performance.
Michael Busch, Dansby Swanson, Seiya Suzuki, Ian Happ and Nico Hoerner give Chicago a lineup without many comfortable places for a pitcher to hide.
McGreevy cannot give that group free baserunners.
His advantage comes from forcing hitters to put the ball in play on his terms.
Ground balls.
Weak contact.
Quick innings.
He cannot afford three-ball counts throughout the afternoon because Chicago will eventually make him throw something over the plate.
Boyd enters Saturday at 8-1 with a 3.50 ERA.
The veteran left-hander has provided stability for the Cubs and presents another test for a Cardinals lineup that must avoid allowing opposing starters to dictate the pace.
The Cardinals should have several right-handed bats available against Boyd, with Walker, Herrera, Winn and Fermín among those positioned to play important roles.
Walker in particular becomes an important matchup.
The Cardinals need him in the middle of this Wild Card push.
His development remains important, but there comes a point when development and production become the same conversation.
Walker is no longer simply a young player trying to establish himself.
He is one of the Cardinals’ best hitters.
They need him to hit like it.
Sunday’s finale may be the most interesting pitching matchup of the weekend.
Hunter Dobbins will start for St. Louis against Cubs left-hander Shota Imanaga.
First pitch is scheduled for 2:15 p.m. CT, with the game receiving national television coverage on ABC.
Dobbins enters at 2-3 with a 3.40 ERA.
His arrival from Boston in the Willson Contreras trade last winter did not generate the attention reserved for higher-profile acquisitions, but Dobbins has gradually created a place for himself in the Cardinals’ pitching plans.
He competes.
He throws strikes.
And he has given the club useful innings when called upon.
That is particularly important now.
The deadline changed the Cardinals rotation.
May is gone.
Quinn Mathews has made his Major League debut but has since been returned to Memphis.
Younger pitchers are moving closer to St. Louis, but the Cardinals still need Major League innings while those arms develop.
Dobbins has an opportunity to show he can provide them.
Imanaga enters at 8-9 with a 3.74 ERA and 130 strikeouts.
The Cubs left-hander is capable of dominating when his fastball command is sharp. His ability to change eye levels and challenge hitters at the top of the strike zone makes him difficult to square up, particularly when hitters begin chasing secondary pitches.
The Cardinals must avoid giving him quick innings.
The first time through the order should be about learning how Imanaga is attacking them without becoming passive.
If the fastball is over the plate, hit it.
If the breaking ball is below the zone, let it go.
That sounds simple because hitting usually does until someone is standing 60 feet, 6 inches away trying to make you fail.
The Cardinals will also enter Wrigley wearing a familiar look.
The club has restored its navy blue caps as the primary road cap for the remainder of the season, beginning with this series.
There are bigger issues than hats in a postseason race, but sometimes tradition does not need to be improved.
The Cardinals looked right in navy on the road for decades.
They will again this weekend.
More importantly, they need to play right.
The Cubs are not the Colorado Rockies.
They are not a rebuilding team simply trying to evaluate players over the final weeks.
Chicago expects to play in October.
The Cubs have won 71 games, own one of the better run differentials in baseball and have spent most of the season among the strongest teams in the National League.
This is exactly the kind of opponent the Cardinals need to face.
There is little value in arguing that St. Louis remains a Wild Card contender if it cannot compete with playoff-caliber teams.
The Cardinals do not need to sweep Chicago.
They need to win the series.
Two out of three would move St. Louis another step closer in the Wild Card race and guarantee the Cardinals the season series over their oldest rival.
It would also continue a trend that has suddenly made August baseball considerably more interesting.
Win series.
Then win another.
That is how teams erase three-game deficits.
Not with projections.
Not with playoff-odds calculators.
Not by spending every afternoon studying what Arizona, Philadelphia, Miami or San Diego might do.
Win the baseball game in front of you.
Friday, that means Liberatore against Holmes.
Saturday, McGreevy against Boyd.
Sunday, Dobbins against Imanaga.
Three games at Wrigley Field with the season series tied.
The Cubs are trying to chase Milwaukee.
The Cardinals are trying to chase October.
And somewhere along the way, a club that sold at the deadline has managed to put itself back into the fight.
Now comes the difficult part.
Stay there.
The Cardinal Chronicle, in association with Gateway Sports & MiLB Today
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Photo Credit: Matthew Liberatore, St. Louis Cardinals | MLB