Cardinals Take Game One Over Cubs

“You’ve all been watching: He’s been spectacular”. No one should be disappointed at this point. The Cardinals are the fifth-best team in the NL at limiting hits to their opponents, allowing only 8.4 hits per game so far this season.

So bitter White Sox fans (or happy Cardinals fans) finally have a place in Chicago to gather and enjoy during the postseason. The Pittsburgh Pirates were blanked for the second wildcard game in the last two seasons. With Game 2 essentially becoming a must-win situation to avoid going down 0-2 in this series, Joe Maddon will likely keep Hendricks on a short leash. It’s a small sample size, to be sure, and Soler has a pedestrian.240/.370/.360 slash line against lefties this season, but the Cubs can’t do any worse at the plate than they did in getting shut out Friday.

There’s no other way to say it, this was a huge win for the Cubs. Do the Cubs truly have the edge over the Cardinals?

The Cardinals homered three times, including a leadoff long ball by Matt Carpenter. Chicago’s pitching staff is one of the best in the NL at pitching on the road, with a 3.33 ERA.

Would you like an interesting statistic? He was followed by Trevor Cahill, then Hector Rondon, who earned the save. He gave up a run in the third, but only threw 24 pitches, meaning he is still available for Game 4. Grichuk’s homer gave the Cardinals two homers in three pinch-hit at-bats this series.

That was before the All-Star break, and before his hot streak started.

The Cubs have been playing at Clark and Addison since 1916 and have never clinched a playoff series at Wrigley Field.

Many people thought that the Cardinals lost the John Lackey trade from the moment it was announced. Hendricks made three big mistake meatball pitches and each one was crushed out of the ballpark.

Catcher Yadier Molina was also back in action for the first time since September 20 due to a strained left thumb ligament.

St. Louis is a -134 favorite against Chicago and the Over/Under (O/U) for this game is sitting at six runs. “They do happen; we’ve got to figure out ways to get around them”. “Today we came out and played”. They pushed runners across when they needed to. “That’s OK. But understand that from our perspective in the clubhouse, we’re more anxious about the process than the outcome”.

“That’s really amusing for me right now”, Rondon said with a laugh. That series is tied 1-1. St. Louis sits at 19th with an OPS of. He went 2-for-2 with a home run, a double and two walks, helping mask the recent struggles of rookie Kris Bryant, who is in a 3-for-34 skid over nine games but is likely to win the league’s Rookie of the Year Award. For the second year in a row, the wildcard doomed them to an early off-season. There will be quite a few Cubs fans in attendance, but the Cardinal faithful will turn out as well.

All of the Cardinals’ scoring came from solo home runs. The Cubs have not made it out of the NLDS. At the end of the series, the final two teams will advance to the National League Championship Series. This is something that needs to be addressed during tomorrow’s off-day, but could be quickly forgotten once he takes the field Monday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. central time.

The Cubs are fortunate to have two former starters in their bullpen.