The Mets open a three-game series with the Cardinals tonight at Busch Stadium at 8:15 PM ET.
Here is tonight’s starting lineup for New York:
Curtis Granderson – RF
Wilmer Flores – 2B
Daniel Murphy – 3B
Lucas Duda – 1B
Kevin Plawecki – C
Kirk Nieuwenhuis – LF
Ruben Tejada – SS
Noah Syndergaard – RHP
Juan Lagares – CF
Here is tonight’s pitching matchup:
Noah Syndergaard (4-4, 3.11 ERA) will start for the Mets.
Lance Lynn (6-5, 2.90 ERA) will start for the Cardinals.
Here’s what I’m looking for from the Mets tonight…
Stay sharp.
The Mets open a difficult ten-game stretch against the class of the National League starting tonight against the Cardinals before moving onto Washington and concluding it with a four-game series against the Dodgers. They’ve aligned their rotation to put their best against Washington, but that shouldn’t diminish the importance of playing well against the Cardinals to begin the stretch tonight.
St. Louis does pretty much everything well, so the Mets must continue to play as clean as possible on defense, get some big hits and keep this pitching on a roll.
Happy #ThorsDay!
Syndergaard is starting to come into his own lately. He was dominant a week ago against Arizona which followed up a splendid start against the Dodgers in Los Angeles. And, he’s showing he can come up huge in a big spot as well.
Tonight is another big spot for Syndergaard, as he’s facing the league’s best in their home ballpark, which is as difficult a place for a visiting team to win as any in baseball. He’s only made two starts in the last 14 days and with the break this week, he could be a little rusty tonight.
How about some more offense?
The Mets hit last weekend against Arizona, and hit for power at that. In fact, the last 15 runs they’ve scored have all come via the home run, and they’ve hit multiple home runs in each of their last three games.
It’s unrealistic to expect the Mets to keep that pace up, especially against the more elite pitching staff of the Cardinals this weekend. But it was nice to see the offense was at least in this group of players, for what it’s worth. Maybe they can score just enough runs and hold St. Louis down to get off to a good start to this difficult ten-game stretch?
Just Mets 