Scouting report • The Cardinals begin a road trip out West starting with a series at the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday. Having dropped two out of three to the visiting San Francisco Giants over this past weekend, the Cardinals still sit in second place, 1½ games behind the Milwaukee Brewers. The Cardinals are even in the loss column.
A strong run of recent starting pitching, including nine scoreless innings from Carlos Martinez, has the Cardinals on top of the MLB leaderboard for rotation ERA — their 3.13 average is the best mark in the majors. In addition, Cardinals starters have been excellent at preventing home runs in 2017, ranking second in MLB with a rate of 0.