From the Pirates’ perspective, it seems like nothing they do ever makes up ground on the Cardinals. Sometimes they drop down to eight or nine games back, sometimes they surge to within three or four, but most of the time the Pirates win and win and win and win and sit five or six games behind the Cardinals. From the Cardinals’ perspective, though, the Pirates must be almost as obnoxious. The Cardinals have baseball’s best record by a wide margin. They are on pace for 103 wins, which would be the most in Major League Baseball in several seasons. Despite that, they have not put the NL Central out of the Pirates’ striking distance yet, as the Pirates are holding serve at about a 97-win pace.
The balance in the NL Central for 2 1/2 years now has gone like this: the Pirates beat the Cardinals in Pittsburgh, the Cardinals beat the Pirates in St. Louis, and then the Cardinals play better than the Pirates against everyone else. Given the lead the Cards have built up in the division, the only way the Pirates can flip this division now is to beat the Cardinals at Busch Stadium. This is not an easy task; Busch Stadium is a veritable House of Horrors for the Pirates, where Kolten Wong becomes Joe Morgan and there’s a walkoff lurking to bite the Pirates in every game.
This series should be interesting; the Pirates are destroying the ball lately, while the Cardinals have a pitching staff that’s headed for a historic group season. They have trouble hitting the ball, though, while the Pirates’ pitching staff is coming apart at the seams. It’s not quite the same place that the two best teams in the National League were in when they met in July at PNC Park, though the Pirate offense certainly found a way to get to the Cardinal pitching staff when it mattered in that series.
Mostly, though, it’s the part about these two teams being the NL’s best to this point that matters. The Pirates and Cardinals have played ten times this year, and five of those games have gone to extra innings, with all five ending in walkoff wins for the home team. This is one of baseball’s best rivalries right now, and while the NL Central doesn’t quite hang in the balance this weekend, whoever wins at least two of these games will feel much better about themselves on Thursday than they do today. I want to say that I’m ready for this series, but given how these first ten games have gone, I’m not sure how to even go about preparing.
First pitch tonight is at 8:15. Jeff Locke is starting for the Pirates, Carlos Martinez for the Cardinals.
Photo by Jared Wickerham/Getty Images
