The NY Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals are playing on the Memorial Day MLB schedule on Monday and the matchup from Busch Stadium is an interleague series and starts up on ESPN on TV at 4:00 pm ET and streaming live online from the WatchESPN website as Michael Wacha and Chase Whitley go head to head against each other in the pitching matchup.
The team comes in after a win against the Chicago White Sox and that saw Masahiro Tanaka bounce back after his first loss of the season and he is now 7-1 on the year after signing from the Japanese league and now a youngster in Whitley will face off against Wacha. The Yankees have been dealing with a number of injuries in the rotation this season with CC Sabathia, Ivan Nova and Michael Pineda going down and that has put Tanaka at the front of the rotation and has Vidal Nuno, David Phelps and Whitley as the players in their place.
The team is ranked 12th in the league in runs and they were able to split with the White Sox after losing the first two games and they are eighth in the league in batting average, 14th in on base percentage and 12th in slugging percentage. The pitching has been improving and the team is now ranked 18th in ERA, 19th in quality starts, 13th in WHIP and 22nd in BAA so far this season. The game on Tuesday is a night matchup and has Phelps pitching against Lance Lynn and these games are big for the team before heading back home after a long road trip.
The Cardinals are coming in after a win against the Reds on the road, with Adam Wainwright beating Mike Leake in an NL Central battle and now they matchup in interleague play with the Yankees. The team has been missing Carlos Beltran's bat in the lineup and so have the Yankees with him being injured and the Cards have some momentum after Wainwright had 12 strikeouts in the game and he had eight shutout innings. The team is ranked in the top 10 in batting average and on base percentage, while they are also 24th in slugging.
The Yankees are in second place in the AL East and they are a few games over .500 and they have been playing up and down as of late and they have a negative run differential. Jacoby Ellsbury had a big hit for the team this past weekend, but he has cooled after a hot start and the team is looking to bounce back. The Cardinals are chasing the Brewers in the NL Central and they are looking to get back to the usual way of things this season.