{"id":808054,"date":"2026-09-18T09:18:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/808054\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:18:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:18:25","slug":"cardinals-open-3-game-series-with-the-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/808054\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinals open 3-game series with the Nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington Nationals<\/a> (71-82, fourth in the NL East) vs. St. Louis Cardinals<\/a> (75-78, fourth in the NL Central)<\/p>\n

St. Louis; Friday, 8:15 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n

PITCHING PROBABLES: Nationals: Cade Cavalli<\/a> (12-5, 3.12 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 194 strikeouts); Cardinals: Kyle Leahy<\/a> (10-4, 3.33 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, 128 strikeouts)<\/p>\n

LINE: Cardinals -115, Nationals -106; over\/under is 7 1\/2 runs<\/p>\n

BOTTOM LINE: The St. Louis Cardinals start a three-game series at home against the Washington Nationals on Friday.<\/p>\n

St. Louis has a 75-78 record overall and a 37-41 record at home. Cardinals hitters have a collective .316 on-base percentage, the ninth-ranked percentage in the NL.<\/p>\n

Washington has gone 34-41 in road games and 71-82 overall. The Nationals have gone 29-19 in games when they did not allow a home run.<\/p>\n

The teams square off Friday for the fourth time this season.<\/p>\n

TOP PERFORMERS: Alec Burleson<\/a> has 37 doubles, a triple and 23 home runs while hitting .284 for the Cardinals. Leonardo Bernal is 11 for 41 with two doubles and two home runs over the past 10 games.<\/p>\n

C.J. Abrams has 30 home runs, 53 walks and 96 RBIs while hitting .264 for the Nationals. Dylan Crews<\/a> is 10 for 36 with four doubles, a home run and six RBIs over the past 10 games.<\/p>\n

LAST 10 GAMES: Cardinals: 4-6, .236 batting average, 4.10 ERA, outscored by three runs<\/p>\n

Nationals: 4-6, .233 batting average, 5.02 ERA, outscored by nine runs<\/p>\n

INJURIES: Cardinals: Joshua Baez: day-to-day (side), Blaze Jordan<\/a>: 10-Day IL (ankle), Max Rajcic<\/a>: 60-Day IL (elbow), Hunter Dobbins: 15-Day IL (forearm), Everson Pereira<\/a>: 10-Day IL (hand)<\/p>\n

Nationals: Matt Waldron<\/a>: 60-Day IL (chest), Connelly Early: 60-Day IL (elbow), DJ Herz: 60-Day IL (elbow), Orlando Ribalta<\/a>: 15-Day IL (forearm), Drew Millas<\/a>: 60-Day IL (finger), PJ Poulin: 60-Day IL (flexor), Mitchell Parker: 60-Day IL (elbow), Ken Waldichuk<\/a>: 60-Day IL (forearm)<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington Nationals (71-82, fourth in the NL East) vs. St. Louis Cardinals (75-78, fourth in the NL Central)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2398],"tags":[1894,5,19003,3573,26653,566,75686,10857,7145,4396,19,2282,74862,4,415,12061,67,414,71,4222],"class_list":["post-808054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-washington-nationals","tag-alec-burleson","tag-baseball","tag-blaze-jordan","tag-cade-cavalli","tag-drew-millas","tag-dylan-crews","tag-event_preview","tag-everson-pereira","tag-ken-waldichuk","tag-kyle-leahy","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-matt-waldron","tag-max-rajcic","tag-mlb","tag-nationals","tag-orlando-ribalta","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-washington","tag-washington-nationals","tag-washingtonnationals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117291299852217195","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}