St. Louis Cardinals probable pitchers & starting lineups vs. Reds, June 30
The St. Louis Cardinals (42-40) followed up their exciting win on Friday night with a dud of a game on Saturday against the Cincinnati Reds (39-44), falling by a score of 9-4. Cardinals’ ace Sonny Gray did not have his best stuff on the mound against his former team, and a costly error by Nolan Arenado during the sixth inning helped the Reds put up 6 runs on the board in that frame.
While a series win is now out of the question for St. Louis, they have the opportunity to split the series this afternoon and leave the weekend three games above .500. The club has been on quite the run since Mother’s Day, but the bats seem to have cooled off this past week and really need to get going again for this club to get putting up wins consistently. Some notable news on the day is that right-hander Gordon Graceffo, who helped save the Cardinals bullpen yesterday by covering 4.1 innings, was optioned back down to Memphis and right-handed reliever Jacob Bosiokovic was called up in his place.
Graceffo was one of the few bright spots for the Cardinals yesterday, but it is not surprising to see him demoted back to Memphis as his call-up was mostly to do with covering innings for a taxed bullpen. Graceffo did his job well, and will surely get an opportunity again soon, maybe even in the rotation.
