The St. Louis Cardinals will hope experience matters when they host the Atlanta Braves for Game 3 of the National League Division Series on Sunday afternoon.
The Cardinals will send venerable right-hander Adam Wainwright (14-10, 4.19 ERA) to the Busch Stadium mound with the series tied at 1. He is 4-4 with four saves and a 3.03 ERA in 24 postseason appearances, including 12 starts.
The Braves will counter with talented 22-year-old rookie Mike Soroka (13-4, 2.68 ERA), who will make his postseason debut.
Cardinals manager Mike Shildt picked Wainwright to start ahead of Dakota Hudson, who will start Game 4.
“Waino has been really good,” Shildt told reporters. “Both have been really good. That’s the thing about our rotation, when you make these decisions. When we were sitting there talking about it, we do our due diligence and go through it rightfully so, but you look up, take a step back, and you go, ‘We’ve got good starting pitching.’”
Wainwright lost his only start against the Braves this season while allowing five runs in four innings on May 16. Wainwright is 9-4 with a 3.63 ERA in 19 career appearances against his former organization, including 14 starts.
While the 38-yearold Wainwright has pitched better at home this season — going 9-4 with a 2.56 ERA — Soroka has been better on the road. Soroka is 7-1 with a 1.55 ERA in 16 starts away from Atlanta.
MLB.com noted that since 1969, the only pitchers to produce a better road ERA were Greg Maddux (1.12 in 1995) and Roger Clemens (1.32 in 2005).
The right-handed Soroka is 1-0 with a 0.69 ERA in two starts against the Cardinals this season.
He will try to build on the work of Braves teammates Mike Foltynewicz, Max Fried and Mark Melancon, who combined to blank the Cardinals on six hits in Friday night’s 3-0 victory.
What do the Cardinals hope to do differently Sunday?
“Hit them,” first baseman Paul Goldschmidt told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “There’s not like a magic sauce. It doesn’t really matter what pitch it is. When a guy makes a mistake, hit it hard. We’ve done that at times.”
Shildt might make one lineup change, inserting Matt Carpenter in place of Harrison Bader. Carpenter would play third base, Tommy Edman would move from third base to right field and Dexter Fowler would slide over from right field to center.
Bader struck out in all three at bats Friday. He has struggled to hit breaking pitches this season and Soroka has an excellent slider.
Braves outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. has gone 4-for-8 with two doubles and a homer through the first two games. He gave a full-tilt performance Friday after drawing criticism for not hustling on a ball he hit off the wall in Game 1 of the series.
Adam Duvall, who spent much of the season in the minors, is 2-for-2 as a pinch-hitter in the series. His two-run shot in Game 2 gave the Braves working room as they bounced back from Thursday’s 7-6 loss.
“Just resilient, that’s who we are,” Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson told MLB.com. “That’s kind of ingrained into us from the top down. We fight each inning. We fight each game. It doesn’t matter what happened yesterday. We’re focused on today.”