Jordan Montgomery could make his final start for the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday — if he isn’t traded first.
Montgomery is scheduled to pitch the second game of the four-game series against the Chicago Cubs in St. Louis. The Cubs won the opener 10-3 on Thursday.
Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak has expressed his desire to deal players with expiring contracts, like Montgomery, for longer-term assets before the Tuesday trade deadline.
Montgomery (6-8, 3.37 ERA) is trying to stay focused on the task at hand as trade speculation swirls around him.
“Rumors are rumors,” he said. “It’s going to happen if it happens. There’s nothing I can do to really control that.”
If Montgomery pitches as scheduled, he is hoping for better results in his rematch with the Cubs. He allowed seven runs, five earned, in six innings during a 7-2 loss at Chicago on Sunday.
His two-out error in the first inning set the stage for Cody Bellinger’s two-run homer. Montgomery allowed five runs in the third inning, with the pivotal hit being a two-out RBI single by Dansby Swanson on a 1-2 pitch. Two more run-scoring hits followed.
“I’ve just got to stop the bleeding,” Montgomery said. “Two-out hits. The inning got away from me, and I just got to make the pitch to get out of it.”
He settled down to throw three scoreless innings, but the damage was done.
“That one inning got him,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said postgame. “The error followed by the homer was a big part of the game, too. But at the end of the day, we’ve seen him really good. He had a little bit more trouble today finishing guys off once he got them to two strikes, and they took some good swings.”
Montgomery is 0-2 with a 9.00 ERA in two starts against the Cubs this season, but 4-2 with a 2.95 ERA in six career starts against them.
While the Cardinals are unambiguous sellers ahead of the deadline, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer is still mulling his options ahead of the deadline.
The Cubs were widely expected to be sellers to continue their rebuild, but they have made a late push to get into the National League wild-card race by winning six straight games and eight of nine. Entering Friday, the Cubs sit four games out of the final NL wild-card spot.
“It’s fun for y’all to write about and fun for us to make their job challenging,” Swanson said. “We’ve been playing really well recently. I love our at-bats. I love the way we’re playing defense, the way the pitching staff’s going. It’s fun to be a part of a collective group that believes in one another.”
Cubs manager David Ross came into the series undecided about his Friday starting pitcher. He opted for a bullpen start for this slot during the previous turn through the rotation on Saturday.
He used reliever Michael Fulmer (1-5, 4.40 ERA) as his opener against the Cardinals and then plugged in Drew Smyly (7-7, 4.60) for bulk innings. Fulmer allowed one run on three hits in two innings, and Smyly gave up five runs (four earned) in 3 2/3 innings during Chicago’s 8-6 win.
Cardinals catcher Willson Contreras should return to the lineup on Friday after exiting Thursday’s game with a scalp laceration. He was injured when Ian Happ hit him in the head with an errant backswing.
In apparent retaliation for the Contreras injury, St. Louis starter Miles Mikolas plunked Happ with a pitch in that plate appearance, and the umpires ejected the pitcher. Marmol was tossed for arguing the ruling.