{"id":16375,"date":"2011-07-07T15:05:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T20:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=16375"},"modified":"2011-08-01T12:51:19","modified_gmt":"2011-08-01T17:51:19","slug":"pujols-2nd-game-back-arizona-diamondbacks-travel-to-saint-louis-to-take-on-the-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/pujols-2nd-game-back-arizona-diamondbacks-travel-to-saint-louis-to-take-on-the-cards-16375\/","title":{"rendered":"Pujols’ 2nd Game Back: Arizona Diamondbacks Travel to Saint Louis to take on the Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arizona Diamondbacks (47-41) AT Saint Louis Cardinals (47-41)<\/strong>
\nJuly 7th, 2011 at 8:15 PM EST<\/strong>
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 STL -145, ARI +125<\/strong>
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 STL -140, ARI +120<\/strong>
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 9<\/strong>
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 8.5<\/strong><\/p>\n

SP:\u00a0 ARI- Joe Saunders; STL- Kyle McClellan<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Albert Pujols will play his second game after returning from a wrist injury, nearly one month ahead of schedule<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pujols has had a rough year so far, and a broken wrist certainly didn’t make things any easier.\u00a0 He returned quickly from the injury, however.\u00a0 He did go just 1 of 6 Wednesday, but the MVP can’t continue to struggle like this if the Cardinals are going to be true contenders this year.\u00a0 He returned nearly a month ahead of schedule from the injury, but the Cardinals lost 9-8 to the Reds on a Ram\u00f3n Hernandez RBI double in the 13th inning.<\/p>\n

It prevented the Cards from sweeping the Reds, but Pujols saw a lot of reasons for hope in the loss.\u00a0 That was awesome, man,\u201d he said. \u201cFor us to be the winning team you\u2019re going to have to do things like that. We\u2019re not going to give up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pujols has had his way with the Diamondbacks in the past and tonight could offer a chance for the slugger to get back to his MVP-style ways.\u00a0 In the last series against Arizona that Pujols participated in, he went 6 for 13 with 2 RBIs, back in mid April, and he is 12 of 27 (.444) with 5 homers in a 7 game home hitting streak against the Diamondbacks that dates back to September of 2008.<\/p>\n

Pujols, nor any of his teammates, have ever faced Diamondbacks starter Joe Saunders, though.\u00a0 In his last outing, Saunders has recorded three consecutive quality starts and only gave up 2 runs and 8 hits in a 4-2 win over the A’s on Saturday.\u00a0 While he claimed he didn’t have his “A game” he said he did make some “big pitches,” and it appears that Saunders is getting the swing of things in his first full major league season.<\/p>\n

The Diamondbacks acquired Saunders as part of the Dan Haren trade, but it appears that the Diamondbacks may have found something in Saunders that other clubs didn’t see.\u00a0 While he doesn’t record many strikeouts and doesn’t have the greatest control and Baseball Prospectus considers him a “back of the rotation starter.”\u00a0 His PECOTA projection for this season called for a 10-12 record with a 4.97 ERA, a projection that looks as though it may be pretty accurate, after all.<\/p>\n

The Diamondbacks have split their 6 games so far and have 4 more road games to complete a 10 game road trip.\u00a0 They dropped their last contest 3 to 1 against the Brewers last night, even though Josh Collmenter recorded 6 shutout innings.\u00a0 Reliever Sam Demel blew the game for the Diamondbacks as he gave up a 3 run homer to Casey McGehee in the 7th inning.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals will send Kyle McClellan to the mound.\u00a0 McClellan is 6-5 with a 4.27 ERA this season, but has not won a decision since May 19th and is 0-4 over his last 6 starts.\u00a0 In his last outing, he gave up 5 runs, all of which were scored in the sixth inning, as the Rays beat the Cards 5-1 at Tropicana field in Tampa.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had to describe it, I didn\u2019t pitch that inning the way I did all the others,\u201d McClellan said. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to prevent them from scoring, doing everything you can. Trying to be too perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

McClellan won his first career start against Arizona on April 11th as he gave up only 1 run and 7 hits in 6 innings of an 8-2 Cardinals’ win.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The total has gone OVER In 4 of the Diamondbacks last 6 games and it has gone OVER in 5 of their last 7 on the road.\u00a0 The Diamondbacks are 17-8 SU in their last 25 on the road and they are 2-4 SU in their last 6 against the Saint Louis Cardinals.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 5 of their last 6 road games against the Cards and the Diamondbacks are 2-7 SU In their last 9 games on the road against the Cards.<\/p>\n

The Saint Louis Cardinals are 6-3 SU in their last 9 games and the total has gone OVER in 5 of their last 7 at home.\u00a0 The Cardinals are 2-4 SU in their last 6 games at home and they are 4-2 SU in their last 6 against the Arizona Diamondbacks.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 5 of the Cards last 6 games at home against the Diamondbacks, while the Cardinals are 7-2 SU in their last 9 home games against the Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n

The total is set high for this one, as neither pitcher is exactly the shut down type.\u00a0 Moreover, Pujols has always done well against the Diamondbacks and should be able to help the Cardinals provide enough run support to win this one.\u00a0 While 9 is a high total for this one, it is plausible that it goes over, given the fact that the two pitchers combine for an ERA over eight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arizona Diamondbacks (47-41) AT Saint Louis Cardinals (47-41) July 7th, 2011 at 8:15 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 STL -145, ARI +125 Current Line:\u00a0 STL -140, ARI +120 Opening Total:\u00a0 9 Current Total:\u00a0 8.5 SP:\u00a0 ARI- Joe Saunders; STL- Kyle McClellan Pujols has had a rough year so far, and a broken wrist certainly didn’t make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":5042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[196,50,4834],"class_list":["post-16375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-albert-pujols","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-saint-louis-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16375"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16745,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16375\/revisions\/16745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}