The St. Louis Cardinals will face off against the Miami Marlins in Game 2 of a three-game series tonight. The Cardinals won Game 1 handily. Adam Wainwright tossed a gem and Pablo Lopez was hit hard. Juan Yepez hit two home runs for the Cardinals and drove in five runs. Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill are both on the IL for the Cardinals, but the Cardinals have continued to play well. Jazz Chisholm Jr. has also been out of the lineup for the past two games for the Marlins with a bad back, so that has been a big loss for them as well. I would say that his loss is much more meaningful to the Marlins than Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill are for the Cardinals. The Cardinals just have so much more depth.
Braxton Garrett will make his fifth start of the season tonight and he has been decent, but he hasn’t been able to get deep into games. That means a lot of bullpen for the Marlins fourth worst ranked bullpen in the league in June. The Cardinals are missing Genesis Cabrera on the COVID IL, but they were able to save all their top bullpen arms in the blowout yesterday. Both their top relievers in Ryan Helsley and Giovanny Gallegos can go two innings tonight if needed. The Cardinals actually haven’t been hitting lefties as well as they did earlier in the season because they are playing with two lefties regularly in Brendan Donovan and Nolan Gorman instead of Tyler O’Neill and Dylan Carlson every day. However, Juan Yepez is clearly hot after last night and Paul Goldschmidt is probably the NL MVP leader right now, he absolutely dominates lefties. They should have plenty of firepower against the lefty.
Dakota Hudson has been much more hit or miss lately but he has also been struggling with walks. If he can keep the Marlins from getting free bases, he should have success. He is just 2-2 with a 4.45 ERA in June but he had two starts to start the month with seven innings pitched and one earned run. He only walked one batter in those two outings as well. The Cardinals are much better at home this season at 23-15 and the Marlins have been much worse on the road this season at 14-23. I like the St. Louis Cardinals to win this series tonight at home.
Cardinals -145 vs. Marlins
