The Cardinals begin their series hosting the last-place Reds 4.5 games ahead in 4th place in the NL Central. Instead of building upon a successful first half of the season, which topped out at 9 games over .500, the Cardinals have stumbled out of the All-Star Break, with continued slumps from the same players who were slumping before it. The slumping, coupled with pitching that has been hit-and-miss and mostly not missing bats lately, has resulted in the Cardinals going 2-5 over the last week.

When the pitching has been giving up an average of 5 runs a game, while the Cardinals have been scoring just over 3 1/2, it just doesn’t add up in the run differential department. And definitely not the area of winning. While the Cardinals dating back before the All Star Break are 4-6, the Reds have been 5-5. The Reds aren’t hot, but at least they’re treading water while St Louis is grinding to a halt, losing 2 of 3 to the last place Angels and winning only 1 of 4 vs the Diamondbacks. It feels like the team easily could have lost all 7 of the last week of games, but somehow they won 5-4 vs the Diamondbacks and 1-0 in Sacramento. That’s how poorly they’ve been playing lately, the worst stretch of the season, in my opinion.

What’s making the team begin to lose momentum? During the month of July, Burleson and Wetherholt have been closer to league average hitters, rather than really good. Slump-ish. Lars Nootbaar is very much in a slump, his statline looking the victim of a curse over the 16 games listed for July. Masyn Winn, who showed some signs of approaching league average at one point last month, has a 70 wRC+ in July. Ivan Herrera has forgotten how to hit, lost at the plate. While Nathan Church has a much worse wRC+ than what Victor Scott II could do. It’s been completely awful hitting in July for Churchie. Blaze Jordan is barely hitting better than Nolan Gorman could do. That all spells for disaster, except that Jordan Walker is raking with an OPS well north of .900, still one of the best hitters in the league.

Well that’s July, how about the last week though? Burly and Blaze are hitting much better, while Fermin and Crooks have been looking good too. Wetherholt is just above league average still, but Herrera, Church and Velazquez have been a black hole of suck on offense over the last week. Winn has been getting worse too.

So this team seems in disarray post all star break, to say the least. Perhaps a nice long homestand will spark some more offense and settle the pitching staff. Hosting the Reds should be a good way to get back on track, one would assume, since they’re last place… but… the Angels! Argh! Baseball hasn’t been much fun lately, but you have to accept the slump as a fan.

Friday 7:15 PM CST Cardinals.TV

Reds 40.4%

Rhett Lowder RHP

5.59 xERA 72 IP 61 SO

• 1. Elly De La Cruz S SS
• 2. Sal Stewart R 1B
• 3. JJ Bleday L LF
• 4. Spencer Steer R RF
• 5. Eugenio Suárez R DH
• 6. Tyler Stephenson R C
• 7. Dane Myers R CF
• 8. Edwin Arroyo S 2B
• 9. Ke’Bryan Hayes R 3B

Cardinals 59.6%

Dustin May RHP

3.90 xERA 98 IP 95 SO

• 1. JJ Wetherholt L 2B
• 2. Iván Herrera R DH
• 3. Alec Burleson L 1B
• 4. Jordan Walker R RF
• 5. Lars Nootbaar L LF
• 6. Masyn Winn R SS
• 7. Nathan Church L CF
• 8. Blaze Jordan R 3B
• 9. Jimmy Crooks L C

Probables provided by Roster Resource via Fangraphs.com

Advantage: Cardinals as long as Dustin May turns around his awful performance over the last 20 innings pitched. May has been either ace-like or back end of rotation, depending on what part of the season. His first month was pretty scary, then during May and June Dustin was light’s out with wOBA against hovering around .250! That’s a ridiculous two month stretch. But what matters is now, and May is very questionable, even terrible, in the month of July. Will the ace version of May please step forward. Or has he already lost steam? Hopefully he can turn it around Friday night, or maybe we can start scoring some runs. How about both!?

One thing that I have just noticed about May’s splits: he is getting crushed by left handed hitters especially while on the road! And he is pitching much better at home overall than on the road. Definitive home-field advantage pitcher.

Saturday 6:15 PM CST Cardinals.TV

Reds 51.2%

Hunter Greene RHP

4.39 xERA 16.1 IP 26 SO

• 1. Elly De La Cruz S SS
• 2. Sal Stewart R 1B
• 3. JJ Bleday L LF
• 4. Spencer Steer R RF
• 5. Eugenio Suárez R DH
• 6. Tyler Stephenson R C
• 7. Dane Myers R CF
• 8. Edwin Arroyo S 2B
• 9. Ke’Bryan Hayes R 3B

Cardinals 48.8%

Andre Pallante RHP

3.73 xERA 105.1 IP 75 SO

• 1. JJ Wetherholt L 2B
• 2. Iván Herrera R DH
• 3. Alec Burleson L 1B
• 4. Jordan Walker R RF
• 5. Lars Nootbaar L LF
• 6. Masyn Winn R SS
• 7. Nathan Church L CF
• 8. Blaze Jordan R 3B
• 9. Jimmy Crooks L C

Roster Resource Projected Lineups via fangraphs.com

Hunter Greene is striking mf’ers out left and right since he’s been back, albeit only in 16.1 IP: 26 K = 14.33 K/9. Meanwhile Andre Pallante is trucking along with his ERA and FIP almost identical, around 4.0. The Cardinals should try to go yard vs Hunter Greene early and often, while Andre shuts down the Reds hitters. The Reds offseason signing of Eugenio Suarez to bolster their offense has not worked out: Elly de la Cruz and JJ Bleday are the Reds most reliable hitters around 120 wRC+, but outside of home run hitting rookie Sal Stewart (110 wRC+) and suporting cast guys like Nathaniel Lowe and Dane Myers, the Reds lineup is pretty bad.

Sunday 1:15 PM CST Cardinals.TV

Reds 43.1%

Andrew Abbott LHP

4.63 xERA 111 IP 90 SO

• 1. Elly De La Cruz S SS
• 2. Sal Stewart R 1B
• 3. JJ Bleday L LF
• 4. Spencer Steer R RF
• 5. Eugenio Suárez R DH
• 6. Tyler Stephenson R C
• 7. Dane Myers R CF
• 8. Edwin Arroyo S 2B
• 9. Ke’Bryan Hayes R 3B

Cardinals 56.9%

Kyle Leahy RHP

5.22 xERA 95.1 IP 79 SO

• 1. JJ Wetherholt L 2B
• 2. Iván Herrera R C
• 3. Jordan Walker R RF
• 4. Alec Burleson L 1B
• 5. Nelson Velázquez R DH
• 6. Masyn Winn R SS
• 7. José Fermín R CF
• 8. Lars Nootbaar L LF
• 9. Blaze Jordan R 3B

Probables via Roster Resource courtesy of fangraphs.com

The Kyle Leahy experiment has been a success. There is no other way to put it, he’s helping the Cardinals win some games. Leahy’s strengths have been his ability to get out of bad situations, with an 80% Left On Base rate, a groundball rate higher than when he was in the bullpen, and the ability to survive despite not getting any favors on BABIP and enduring a rather normal home run rate for a back-of-the-rotation starter. Kyle has had the ability to lock down and produce without giving up too much damage. Leahy’s K rate is down and walk rate up from last season’s excellent bullpen performance, but Kyle has been able to withstand the pressures of being an innings eater. xERA is Leahy’s only bad rate stat, so this game is more evenly matched pitching-wise, than it might seem.

Those lineups probably won’t be exactly what you might see, but close to it, perhaps.

You know me, I’m really hoping for a series sweep here, but I would be more than happy with a series win at home, considering how things have been going on the road lately. Let’s change the trajectory, shall we?

After the Reds, we have an epic 4 game series with the Cubs, so that should be interesting!

I feel like I would be remiss not to say that this Saturday’s weekend game is the powder blue jersey night, to the first 15,000 fans. I should probably go to that game.