The Cincinnati Reds are struggling at the plate in the early going this season<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSt. Louis has won the first two games of this series and will aim for a sweep before returning home for a six-game homestand that starts Friday against the Chicago Cubs.\u00a0 The Cardinals have managed to his 11 home runs and are hitting .310 on the season, which is quite surprising due to star first baseman Albert Pujols moving on to the Los Angeles Angels during the offseason.\u00a0 Third baseman David Freese has been tremendous in the early going, hitting .444 with three round trippers and 10 RBIs.\u00a0 St. Louis is 89-88 on the road the last two-plus seasons.<\/p>\n
Cardinals starting pitcher Jaime Garcia (1-0, 3.00 ERA) is set to make his second start of the 2011 campaign, registering an 11-5 road victory over the Milwaukee Brewers.\u00a0 The left-hander allowed just two runs and five hits over six innings of work, while issuing two walks and picking up three strikeouts.\u00a0 He has carried over his strong performance from Spring Training, as he finished with an even 1-1 mark and 2.79 ERA in five starts.\u00a0 Garcia has a career record of 6-1 with a 3.13 ERA in eight career starts (10 appearances) versus the Reds.<\/p>\n
Cincinnati dropped a 3-1 contest on Tuesday night and the team is managing to hit just .201 on the season through five games.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ve got some guys struggling right now at the plate,\u201d stated Reds manager Dusty Baker. \u00a0 The Reds have managed to score just one run in each of the first two games in this series, while combining for just seven hits.\u00a0 Shortstop Zack Cozart has found some success at the plate, hitting .471 with a home run and two RBIs thus far.\u00a0 Cincinnati is 91-68 against division opponents the last two-plus campaigns.<\/p>\n
Reds starting pitcher Johnny Cueto (1-0, 0.00 ERA) was magnificent in his season-opening start against the Miami Marlins at home, tossing seven shutout innings and surrendering just three hits.\u00a0 The right-hander fell just six innings short of qualifying for the ERA title in the National League a year ago, finishing with a 9-5 record and 2.31 ERA in 24 starts.\u00a0 He has garnered an even 4-4 mark and 4.94 ERA in 13 career starts versus the Cardinals, including a 1-1 record and 2.60 ERA in four outings a year ago.<\/p>\n
Bettors will likely back the Cardinals due to their 4-1 record as an underdog, while the Reds are 3-7 in their last 10 games versus a left-handed starter.<\/p>\n
Make sure to check out our Major League Baseball picks<\/a> all season long and get the most up-to-date betting odds at Bookmaker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The St. Louis Cardinals (5-1) and Cincinnati Reds (2-3) will close out a three-game National League Central series on Wednesday at the Great American Ballpark St. Louis Cardinals at Cincinnati Reds St. Louis has won the first two games of this series and will aim for a sweep before returning home for a six-game homestand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":15558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[78,2026,1754,977,25,2324,841],"class_list":["post-22688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-great-american-ballpark","tag-jaime-garcia","tag-johnny-cueto","tag-mlb","tag-national-league-central","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22688","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\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22688"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22690,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22688\/revisions\/22690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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