One of baseball’s biggest rivalries kicks off the Memorial Weekend at Wrigley Field.<\/p>\n
St. Louis Cardinals at Chicago Cubs<\/strong><\/p>\n St. Louis avoided a sweep in San Diego on Thursday evening, picking up an 8-3 victory over the Padres at Petco Park.\u00a0 The Cardinals had scored just one run in the first two games of the series, but broke out in a big way in the series finale, led by star 1B Albert Pujols.\u00a0 He hit his first home run and picked up his first RBIs in 12 games, a slump that saw his average fall from .344 to .303 coming into the series.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s always good when Albert\u2019s hitting,\u201d St. Louis manager Tony LaRussa said.\u00a0 The team is now 12-13 on the road this season (-420) and 27-21 overall (-460).\u00a0 Against division foes this season, St. Louis has compiled an 11-10 mark (-690) and is 93-85 against the NL Central over the last three years (-1,380).<\/p>\n Cardinals SP Chris Carpenter is 9-3 with a 2.81 ERA in 17 career starts against the Cubs, including a 2-0 mark and a 1.42 ERA over three starts in 2009.\u00a0 He made just one of those starts at Wrigley Field last season, picking up a victory while allowing three runs and seven hits over six innings.\u00a0 The former Cy Young winner is 2-1 with a 3.33 ERA in four daytime starts this year, allowing just 21 hits and striking out 20 over 27 innings of work.\u00a0 The Cardinals are 8-2 in his starts during the 2010 season (+340).<\/p>\n Chicago enters this Memorial Day weekend series winners of eight of their last 11 games and finds itself back into contention within the division.\u00a0 The Cubs currently stand five games of the division-leading Reds and just four back of the second-place Cardinals.\u00a0 Manager Lou Piniella\u2019s team is set to play their next 12 games against division opponents, as they\u2019ve compiled a dismal 9-12 record within the NL Central so far (-900).\u00a0 Day games are usually a bettors\u2019 dream when backing the Cubbies each season, but they are an even 11-11 in 2010, after going 92-62 the previous two seasons (+530).<\/p>\n Cubs SP Randy Wells is set to make his tenth start of the season, owning a 3-2 record and 3.99 ERA with 45 strikeouts and just 11 walks.\u00a0 The young right-hander is an even 1-1 with a 4.33 ERA at home in four starts this season, with the team posting a 3-1 record in those outings (+180).\u00a0 He has made just two career appearances against St. Louis, producing a 0-1 record and 4.50 ERA in eight innings of work.\u00a0 Wells is still looking for his first victory of May, being relatively sharp since a dreadful start in Pittsburgh on May 6.\u00a0 Wells has led the team to victories in two of his last three starts, allowing just seven earned runs and 18 hits over his last 23 innings of work.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bettors need to really consider the following quote when capping today\u2019s game at Wrigley Field, “We get into Chicago less than 12 hours before we play,” La Russa said. “Everybody does it, the Padres aren’t doing it any different than anybody else, but Major League Baseball ought to step in. … When you’ve got a club like ours that has a 1 [o’clock] game in Chicago, that’s not fair.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of baseball’s biggest rivalries kicks off the Memorial Weekend at Wrigley Field. St. Louis Cardinals at Chicago Cubs St. Louis avoided a sweep in San Diego on Thursday evening, picking up an 8-3 victory over the Padres at Petco Park.\u00a0 The Cardinals had scored just one run in the first two games of 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":[180,841,1637],"class_list":["post-3652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-wrigley-field"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652","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=3652"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3654,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3652\/revisions\/3654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}