Next week, another official announcement from MLB about how the St. Louis Cardinals will make up a boatload of lost games.
Three of those games, from last weekend, are against the Cubs, and they are now back on the schedule as double buyers for Monday, Wednesday and September 5:
MLB announces updates for cardinal plans. pic.twitter.com/KlDE1A0QOL
– Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) August 14, 2020
The priority for now, as you can see, is making the NL Central games. I get that, and I agree with it. If the Cardinals are not going to get to 60 games this year, then at least you want them to see in all of their NL Central games.
What this means going forward, we discussed this morning about the implications of the Cubs now having to play five games in new days in three days next week. It probably won’t be terrible thanks to 29 men deployed and having a day after the series, but the Cubs lost on two “normal” starts of what has been a stellar rotation. While things are moving now, Kyle Hendricks and Tyler Chatwood would each get a start on the days of the doubleheader, and Yu Darvish would start the 9-inning game in the middle. We’ll see if Colin Rea or Jose Quintana or Adbert Alzolay get the follow-up start (s) as another call.
If the Cardinals can actually get back into action this weekend as planned now, we’ll get our first look at how they set up their roster. We know Dylan Carlson, top foreign prospect, is coming, but beyond that, we do not have much sense about call, additions for deviation, and so on. We do not even know if some of the players who originally tested positive are actually now eligible to return – it’s been more than two weeks ago, so it’s definitely possible.
A reminder: this year, doubleheaders are just seven innings, and because of the makeup games in St. Louis. Louis would be, the Cardinals would be the ‘home team’ team for one of the games in each of the doubleheaders. That that will be wild.
