The St. Louis Cardinals have an upcoming series against the Colorado Rockies

Full disclosure on this preview: I am writing this from the past. Unless I have made a terrible mistake I should be in Atlixco, Puebla as you read this. Which means I don’t know what happened in the Cardinals series against the Twins. So here is something to cover either case. The Cardinals are coming off another series loss and will hopefully play better against the 42-65 Colorado Rockies. That or the Cardinals successfully pulled off a series win against the first place Minnesota Twins and hope to keep that going against the Colorado Rockies.

I am in a bit of bind as these are the pitching matchups I have to work with right now:

I think if I have counted corrected the probables might be based on the rotation in the last five games something like Chris Flexen, Ty Blach, and Austin Gomber. As a rotation, they Rockies are near the bottom in FIP at 5.10. Of these three pitchers Blach has the best FIP at 4.21, but has only pitched 21 innings as a starter. In those innings he has a K rate of just 9.6% and a walk rate of 3.2%. He mostly throws a sinker and mixes in a changeup and occasionally a cutter.

Gomber has a 5.33 FIP and a 5.68 ERA. He throws a 4-seamer and mixes in a changeup, slider, and curveball. His 4-seamer has the unique distinction of been one of the least valuable pitches I have seen while writing this previews with a -17 run value per Baseball Savant. If you look at the heat map on his profile for this pitch, it is pretty clear why. It looks to be a big ole meatball and he pitches about half his starts in Denver.

Of this trio Flexen has the worst FIP at 13.91 in his 3.2 innings. I have no idea if he is going to be a starter in this series, but if he is, he throws a 4-seamer, cutter, changeup, and slider. That’s all the effort you are getting out of me on this one, folks.

The offense isn’t much better for the Rockies, in fact it might be worse. As a team they have the lowest wRC+ in the league at 80. Their best hitter appears to be Randal Grichuk and he isn’t even on the Rockies anymore. After Grichuk, the next best hitter that is still a member of the Rockies looks like rookie Nolan Jones with a 110 wRC+.

I... this... this is... Look. I don’t know how to say this politely. The Cardinals are only five games above the Rockies in the win-loss column and that seems impossible to me when comparing these two teams, at least on paper. The Rockies look... just so bad. I’m sorry. I’m sorry any Rockies fans reading this. But... I can’t find anything exciting to write about. Man, the Cardinals were just so cursed this season. When I look at teams like this that have only won just a few less games than the Cardinals it is just mind-boggling to me what happened this season. What a disaster lol.

Matchups:

oh yeah, I don’t have those. Here are the game times:

Friday, August 4 at 7:15 pm CT: TBD
Saturday, August 5 at 6:15 pm CT: TBD
Sunday, August 6 at 7:15 pm CT: TBD