Cardinals at Yankees

Second game of this series in the Bronx, first pitch in the early evening, warm night, with the wind drifting across the outfield. Last night these two put up a mountain of runs and a pile of home runs, and the crowd went from silent to berserk to silent again in about three innings. Tonight the betting market wants me to lay a heavy price on the team that lost that game — a Yankee club that's barely been scratching out runs for the last two weeks. That's the whole ballgame for me right there.

Look at the lineup Boone is running out. It's stacked with lefty hitters against a righty pitcher, and the three men who make this lineup scary — Judge, Stanton, Bellinger — are all sitting. Volpe and Dominguez got sent down this morning. Lombard Jr. is playing his first big league game tonight. Grisham, Rice, Chisholm and McMahon have all been ice cold at the plate lately. García Jr. is legit and Spencer Jones has real power, but that's two bats. Meanwhile Dobbins has been the steadier pitcher once you strip out the luck, comfortably better than Weathers by the underlying numbers, and Weathers has pitched noticeably worse in this ballpark than he does anywhere else. New York is the better team. New York is not nearly as sure a thing as this price says.

I'm not talking myself into St. Louis winning outright — Burleson is on the bench against the lefty, their bats are cold up and down, and the Yankee relievers Bednar and Cruz are the best arms on this field late. What I want is the cushion. Both starters are on short leashes, both bullpens got worked hard last night, and games like that rarely end in a comfortable margin. The price on this run line says the Cardinals hang around just a shade more often than a coin flip. Underdogs at this kind of price, when they do lose, lose by a single run an awful lot. Give me the run and a half, and let New York try to beat me by two with the lineup they've got left.