Cardinals should destroy the Brewers

The Cardinals just wrapped up a little homestand facing a Mets without going against their ace and and A’s team without any decent starting pitchers. The team responded by going just 2-4, and now the Pirates are only half a game back in the wild card race. The team gets back on the road to face Milwaukee. The Cardinals should destroy the Brewers.

It’s been about six weeks since the Cardinals last faced the Brewers, and the team remains somewhat changed since then. The team traded Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith at the trading deadline, making Tyler Thornburg their closer. He’s pretty solid, but it has thinned out their bullpen a bit. Junior Guerra has been on the disabled list and will not be pitching. The team also traded their franchise catcher, Jonathan Lucroy to the Rangers and Martin Maldonado has taken over. The most exciting part of the current aspect of the team is the appearance of Orlando Arcia.

Arcia is a very good shortstop prospect who was not hitting all that well when he got the call a month ago. He’s been even worse at the plate in his major league debut with just a 45 wRC+ in just under 100 plate appearances. He just turned 22 this month and should get better with age. He has pushed Jonathan Villar to third base with Scooter Gennett still manning second base most of the time. The team still has Chris Carter at first and Ryan Braun in the outfield.

The team has gone back and forth a bit with Keon Broxton, and it is not yet clear if he will pan out, but in this stage of the rebuilding process, the team can afford to see what he has. Broxton has struck out an astonishingly high 37% of the time, but has also walked in 16% of his plate appearances with a slightly above average ISO. That has led to an average line so far and Jeff Sullivan recently profiled his recent hot streak at FanGraphs.

Domingo Santana is also in the outfield, and if the Brewers could get one of Broxton or Santana to work out in the long term, one wuld have to consider that a success. Santana strikes out a ton as well to go along with a lot of walks, but he hasn’t been able to translate his raw power into games.

In tonight’s game, Zach Davies makes the start for Milwaukee. The 23-year-old righty has had a solid season for the Brewers with a 4.06 ERA and 3.95 FIP. Davies uses an upper-80s twoseam fastball more than 50% of the time, but also mixes in a cutter, curve, and change. Carlos Martinez will go for the Cardinals.

Tuesday night, Wily Peralta will pitch for the Brewers. I always thought Wily Peralta was going to be better than he is right now. He showed a bit of promise several years back, and strangely enough, I always thought the good versions of Joe Kelly and Wily Peralta would look pretty similar. Unfortunately, we have been blessed/cursed with the bad version of both. Adam Wainwright is on the mound for St. Louis.

In the finale Wednesday night, Matt Garza is pitching for Milwaukee. Garza was pretty good in the first year of his contract back in 2014, but he has not been any good since then. The Brewers still owe him another $12.5 million next year. Luke Weaver will pitch for the Cardinals. I haven’t seen Garza’s face lately, but this matchup has the potential to have the worst combined facial hair in the history of baseball.

Tonight’s game starts at 6:20 pm CT and will air on FOX Sports Midwest.

Tuesday’s game starts at 7:10 pm CT and will air on FOX Sports Midwest

Wednesday’s game starts at 7:10 pm CT and will air on FOX Sports Midwest