The Cardinals open a three-game series against the Reds in St. Louis on July 24, and they do it carrying the kind of recent form that turns an ordinary home set into a test. They are 2-5 over the last week, and the edge they hold in the NL Central has not protected them from the way the games have been going lately.
That is why this matchup is drawing attention now. The Cardinals are 4.5 games ahead in fourth place, but they have been scoring just over 3 1/2 runs a game while giving up an average of 5 runs a game. The Reds arrive after a 5-5 stretch, and the series gives the Cardinals a chance to stop a slide that has been more about what has gone wrong around the lineup than about one bad night.
Jordan Walker has been the one clear bright spot. He is raking with an OPS well north of.900 while other familiar names are not carrying the same load, and that matters because the Cardinals have needed any source of steady offense they can find. Before the All-Star Break, they were 4-6, and the overall picture has been uneven enough that even a few good swings from Walker can change how the lineup looks from one game to the next.
The pitching side brings its own uncertainty. Dustin May has flashed ace-like form at points and looked more like a back-end starter at others, and during May and June he had wOBA against hovering around.250. In July, though, he has been very questionable or terrible, which is a problem for a team that has been outscored recently and cannot afford another short outing if it wants to keep this series from turning into a scramble.
That is the friction inside a preview that still favors the Cardinals. They split the last week with losses to the Angels and Diamondbacks in a stretch that included a 5-4 win and a 1-0 win in Sacramento, but the bigger trend is harder to ignore: they have gone 4-6 dating back before the All-Star Break and have stumbled out of it with both the bats and the rotation under strain. The Reds may be last place in the NL Central, yet the Cardinals have not looked like a club that can simply assume the standings will sort this one out.
The next answer comes quickly. If May can turn around his awful performance over the last 20 innings pitched, the Cardinals still have a clear path to controlling the series. If he cannot, then the pressure shifts back onto a lineup that has already shown how thin its margin has become.
