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Pirates, Cardinals clash on Sunday Night Baseball
By: Staff Writer - StatFox
Published: 6/23/2017  at  10:30:00 PM
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PITTSBURGH PIRATES

at ST. LOUIS CARDINALS

First pitch: Sunday, 8:00 p.m. ET
Line: N/A, Total: N/A

The Pirates will be looking for a big road victory when they take on the Cardinals on Sunday Night Baseball.

Both the Pirates and the Cardinals have been underperforming this season, and that makes this Sunday night game a good one. Both teams know that they can’t afford to keep losing games, as they both aren’t that far behind in their division. They both are currently trailing the Brewers, but there’s a very good chance that somebody overtakes Milwaukee by the end of the year. The Brewers are good, but they were not expected to be better than either of these two teams or the Cubs. The starters in this game on Sunday are going to be RHP Chad Kuhl (2-6, 5.46 ERA, 53 K) for Pittsburgh and RHP Mike Leake (5-6, 3.03 ERA, 66 K) for St. Louis. Kuhl has pitched well in four straight games for Pittsburgh, so he should be confident when he gets out there on Sunday. Leake, meanwhile, is coming off of a good start for the Cards. He had let up six earned runs in six innings two starts ago, so he really needed it.

If the Pirates are going to win on Sunday then they will need Chad Kuhl to continue to pitch the way he has over his past four starts. Kuhl doesn’t work deep into games for this Pirates team, but he has allowed three or fewer earned runs in each of his past four starts. He has gone at least five innings in each of those outings, and Pittsburgh will be hoping he can go a bit further into this one. Kuhl tends to put a lot of runners on and work himself out of jams, and he needs to find a way to be better at the beginning of innings. Offensively, OF Andrew McCutchen and 3B David Freese are two guys to watch out for in this game. McCutchen is 21-for-80 with two doubles, two homers, and six RBI against Leake in his career. He has seen him a bunch and knows his tendencies, so he should be able to get a few good at bats in. Freese has been even better against the righty, going 16-for-31 with four doubles, a homer, and six RBI in their head-to-head matchup. He’ll hope to have a big game on the national stage.

Mike Leake is coming off of a very good outing against the Phillies, as the righty allowed just one earned run in six innings of work on Jun. 20. Leake struck out five batters in that game, and it was the third time he had done that in the past four starts. Leake has already faced Pittsburgh once this season, and he allowed just one earned run in 6.1 innings in that Apr. 18 start. He’d certainly sign up for yet another one of those outings on Sunday, and will do everything he can to avoid the type of start he had against the Brewers two starts ago. Offensively, 1B Matt Carpenter is one of the few Cardinals that has had success against Kuhl. It’s a very small sample size, but he is 2-for-4 with a double against the righty. The Cardinals will definitely be hoping that he can step it up and produce in this one. They’ll also want something from OF Stephen Piscotty and C Yadier Molina.


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