A pair of first-place teams square off at Petco Park in the\u00a0opening game of a three-game series.<\/p>\n
St. Louis Cardinals at San Diego Padres<\/strong><\/p>\n St. Louis is set to begin its six-game road trip against the San Diego Padres, after completing a successful 5-2 homestand against Washington, Florida and the Los Angeles Angels (+194).\u00a0 The Cardinals have produced a 26-19 overall record in large part to their strong pitching staff, raking second in the league with a 3.07 ERA, just behind tonight\u2019s opponent.\u00a0 The team has an even 11-11 record on the road this season (-240), including an even 3-3 mark against the NL West (-55).\u00a0 Runs are tough to come by at Petco Park, which places even more pressure on star 1B Albert Pujols to break out of a slump.\u00a0 The three-time MVP is 3-for-20 in his last six games and doesn\u2019t have an RBI in his last nine.<\/p>\n Cardinals SP Adam Wainwright is 6-2 with a 2.49 ERA in nine starts this season.\u00a0 The right-hander is an even 2-2 with a 2.83 ERA in five road starts this season (-200), allowing just 26 hits in 35 innings of work.\u00a0 In four appearances (one start), he is 1-0 with a 1.86 ERA against the Padres, but has allowed 14 hits in 9.2 innings.\u00a0 The Cardinals have alternated wins and losses in his last seven starts, picking up a 4-2 home victory over the Marlins his last outing.\u00a0 Early-game prop bettors need to take notice that Wainwright has yet to give up a run in his first 30 pitches of a ball game this season.<\/p>\n San Diego enters this series with a one-game lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West.\u00a0 The Padres have cooled off in May, posting an 11-10 overall record (+170), but their .591 winning percentage (26-18) in second in the National League behind the Philadelphia Phillies.\u00a0 The team has played .500 or better ball in five of their last seven months of play, including a 15-8 record in April this year.\u00a0 Manager Bud Black\u2019s team comes into this series ranked first in earned-run average overall, by starters, relievers and at Petco Park.\u00a0 The under is 25-15-4 in the Padres first 44 games this year.<\/p>\n Padres SP Jon Garland is 2-0 with a 1.08 ERA in four home starts this season (+170), but has issued 16 free passes and struck out just eight over 25 innings.\u00a0 The 31-year-old veteran was 0-2 with an 8.38 ERA in two starts against the Cardinals last year, as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks.\u00a0 Garland has held Pujols to a .250 batting average (2-for-8), but both of his hits have left the park.\u00a0 Surprisingly enough, St. Louis C Yadier Molina has given the right-hander all he can handle, going a perfect 5-for-5 at the plate with two RBI.\u00a0 He has compiled a dominating 25-15 record with a 3.93 ERA in 55 career games (52 starts) in May.<\/p>\n Prop bettors will certainly have interest in playing that no runs will be scored in the first inning in his matchup, as both Garland and Wainwright have yet to allow a run in their first 30 pitches this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n St. Louis has a great chance of picking up its first victory with a total of seven or less this season (0-3, -400), with the great success the offense had against Garland last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A pair of first-place teams square off at Petco Park in the\u00a0opening game of a three-game series. St. Louis Cardinals at San Diego Padres St. Louis is set to begin its six-game road trip against the San Diego Padres, after completing a successful 5-2 homestand against Washington, Florida and the Los Angeles Angels (+194).\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[1524,196,1098,1605,891,841],"class_list":["post-3579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-adam-wainwright","tag-albert-pujols","tag-jon-garland","tag-petco-park","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579","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=3579"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3582,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3579\/revisions\/3582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}