The Cardinals may have been sluggish in Game 1 after playing on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball the night before, but expect a better performance with one of their aces taking the hill tonight.<\/p>\n
St. Louis Cardinals at Los Angeles Dodgers<\/strong><\/p>\n St. Louis dropped the first game of its current road trip, 12-4, to the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.\u00a0 \u201cIt was just a rough night,\u201d Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa said. \u201cThey hit some soft balls that were hits, but they also had some hard-hit balls where we turned some double plays.\u201d\u00a0 The Cardinals are 133-138 all-time at Dodger Stadium, which represents the highest winning percentage (.493) amongst all opposing National League teams at Chavez Ravine.\u00a0 OF Colby Rasmus was out of the starting lineup on Monday night because of tightness in his left calf.\u00a0 He was named as the National League Player of the Week for May 31 to June 6, batting .500 with three HR and 9 RBI.\u00a0 The offense missed his presence, with sluggers\u2019 Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday combining to go hitless in seven at-bats.\u00a0 The loss dropped the Cardinals a game under .500 (11-12) when playing teams with a winning record this season (-410).<\/p>\n Cardinals SP Chris Carpenter is coming off one of his best starts of the season, allowing just a single run over eight innings in a 4-1 home victory over the Reds.\u00a0 \u201cI was happy with the way my stuff was,\u201d Carpenter said of his last start.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m going to continue to work to get it better and hope I can build on it.\u201d\u00a0 The right-hander has a great chance of building off that start, as he\u2019s 9-0 with a 2.42 ERA in his last 14 regular-season road starts.\u00a0 Carpenter is also a dominating 5-0 with a 2.20 ERA in six career starts against the Dodgers (+480), including going 2-0 with a 1.80 ERA in two starts versus Los Angeles last year.\u00a0 One factor that could prove critical for the former Cy Young Award Winner is the amount of rest he\u2019s pitching on.\u00a0 He is 5-0 with a 1.91 in eight outings with regular rest and 1-1 with a 5.21 ERA in three when he\u2019s had five days or more between starts.\u00a0 St. Louis is a dominating 10-2 with him on the mound (+540).<\/p>\n Los Angeles moved its home record to 21-10 (+580) on the year and moved ahead of the Atlanta Braves for baseball\u2019s best record since May 1 (25-10).\u00a0 Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully will certainly focus in on the managerial matchup from a historical point-of-view, considering LaRussa ranks third all-time with 2,585 wins and Los Angeles manager Joe Torre is fifth with 2,280.\u00a0 2B Blake Dewitt paced the offense last night, collecting a career-high five RBIs and is batting .538 (7-for-13) in hitting safely his past four games.\u00a0 The lineup may get a lift with the return of 3B Casey Blake and C Russell Martin.\u00a0 Blake has been out since Wednesday with a back injury, while Martin has been rested the past two games due to a 4-for-21 slide.\u00a0 The Dodgers have been placed as a home underdog of +100 to +125 for just the third time this season, going 1-1 in the prior situations (+10).<\/p>\n Dodgers SP Hiroki Kuroda is 5-4 with a 3.63 ERA in 11 previous starts this season (+220), but has dropped three straight coming into tonight.\u00a0 The right-hander allowed four runs (three earned) on seven hits over six innings in a 4-3 home loss to the Braves last time out.\u00a0 He made his only previous start against the Cardinals on July 30, 2009 at Dodger Stadium, surrendering two runs and four hits over six innings in a no-decision.\u00a0 Kuroda has seen his earned-run-average escalate each month since the start of the season, posting a 2.36 mark in April, followed by a 4.42 and 4.50 ERA the last two months respectively.\u00a0 Los Angeles is a solid 4-2 with him on the mound at home (+120).<\/p>\n In such a matchup, it\u2019s always important to check out the home plate umpire.\u00a0 Dana DeMuth is set to call balls and strikes on Tuesday night, as pitchers have tallied an average of 14.5 strikeouts and 6.2 walks in his 13 games this season. Both teams are perfect with tonight\u2019s starters on the mound and DeMuth behind the dish, with the Cardinals posting a 2-0 record and Dodgers winning its only contest against the Pirates earlier this year on May 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Cardinals may have been sluggish in Game 1 after playing on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball the night before, but expect a better performance with one of their aces taking the hill tonight. St. Louis Cardinals at Los Angeles Dodgers St. Louis dropped the first game of its current road trip, 12-4, to the Los […]<\/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":[196,1768,1766,1755,1732,1573,1157,429,533,1767,841,1769],"class_list":["post-3887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","tag-albert-pujols","tag-blake-dewitt","tag-chris-carpenter","tag-colby-rasmus","tag-dodger-stadium","tag-espn-sunday-night-baseball","tag-hiroki-kuroda","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-matt-holliday","tag-russell-martin","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-vin-scully"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3887","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=3887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3888,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3887\/revisions\/3888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}