Pirates at Cardinals, 7/26/20: Game Thread

By Patricia Beninato@PTBeninato Jul 26, 2020, 1:20pm EDT

Pittsburgh Pirates v St Louis Cardinals — We occasionally know how to do this.

Two young pitchers go head-to-head in the last game of the 2020 opening series between the Pirates and Cardinals at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. The first pitch will be at 2:15 p.m. Eastern, with AT&T SportsNet broadcasting the game.

Mitch Keller will take the mound for the Bucs, his first outing of the season. He struggled somewhat in his 2019 rookie season, going 1-5 with a 7.13 ERA, but he has worked at length with technology on his fastball spin and changeup during the offseason. Hopefully that work, both with Rapsodo and Oscar Marin, will pay off today.

Dakota Hudson has established himself as an important piece of the Cardinals’ rotation. In his first full season he went 16-7 with a 3.35 ERA, but he’d rather forget his last outing in Game Four of the NLCS, where he got positively shelled by the eventual champion Washington Nationals and lasted a third of an inning.

Here are your lineups, and LET’S GO BUCS!

Pirates

Adam Frazier, 2B

Bryan Reynolds, LF

Josh Bell, DH

Colin Moran, 1B

Phillip Evans, 3B

José Osuna, RF

Jarrod Dyson, CF

Jacob Stallings, C

Erik Gonzalez, SS

Cardinals