Royals face Cardinals out to rediscover recent form
The St. Louis Cardinals enter rivalry weekend filled with confidence, while still amid their most successful stretch of the season.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Royals have cooled off since their lengthy winning run.
The "I-70 Series" begins Friday night at Kansas City, where the Royals look to keep the surging Cardinals from handing them a third consecutive loss.
St. Louis had its nine-game winning streak snapped with a 2-1 defeat in the opener of Wednesday's doubleheader at Philadelphia. However, the Cardinals bounced back to win 14-7 in the nightcap.
On April 23, St. Louis fell to 10-15, but is 14-5 since, and 5-1 on its current nine-game trip. Over the last nine games, the Cardinals have outscored opponents 62-27, while batting .281 with 20 doubles, 13 home runs. The pitching staff owns a 2.48 ERA in that time.
"During this stretch, we showed a little bit of everything," said Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn, who hit a home run with four hits in Game 2 on Wednesday.
St. Louis' Lars Nootbaar is 11-for-30 (.367) with two homers and six RBIs during a seven-game hitting streak.
The Cardinals will look for another solid outing from scheduled starter Andre Pallante (3-2, 4.36 ERA), who gave up his only runs on a two-run homer in the eighth inning Saturday at Washington. The right-hander gave up five hits with seven strikeouts over 7 1/3 innings.
It was an impressive bounce back from Pallante, who gave up four runs, four walks and nine hits in 3 1/3 innings against the New York Mets in his previous outing.
"I felt like I pitched pretty well, compared to my last outings," Pallante said. "I want to get ahead in the count. ... When I'm going well that's what I've been doing, so we did a good job of attacking that (Saturday).
Pallante is 0-1 with a 3.75 ERA in two starts versus Kansas City, with both coming in 2024.
Royals veteran Salvador Perez is 2-for-6 with a homer versus Pallante. Fellow star teammate Bobby Witt Jr is 0-for-6 against him, but is 8-for-23 (.348) with two homers and eight RBIs in his six home games versus St. Louis.
Witt is 5-for-22 in the last six games overall, dropping his average to .312 .
The Royals have totaled 13 runs while losing four of the past five games. That has followed a 16-2 run where they averaged 4.3 runs. After failing to hold a 3-1 lead in Wednesday's 4-3 loss at Houston, Kansas City has dropped two straight one-run games.
The Royals are also 9-19 when being held to three or fewer runs, but 16-1 while scoring four or more.
"They're tough losses," Royals manager Matt Quartaro said.
"We've got to figure out how to be one run better."
Scheduled Kansas City starter Cole Ragans (2-2, 4.20 ERA) went 1-0 with a 2.28 ERA in his first four outings of 2025. However, the 2024 Cy Young Award finalist is 1-2 with a 6.88 ERA over his four most recent satrts, and hasn't completed more than five innings in any.
"Lately, I haven't been doing a good job of doing that," Ragans said.
On Saturday, the left-hander allowed four runs and seven hits with eight strikeouts in five innings of a 10-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox.
In his only previous start against the Cardinals from 2023, Ragans yielded four runs, six hits and four walks in five innings.
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