Two teams who have struggled throughout June will try to change their trajectory when the St. Louis Cardinals visit the Atlanta Braves for a three-game series that begins on Tuesday.
Both teams are 3-7 over their last 10 games and will be happy to turn the calendar. The Braves are 9-13 in June and the Cardinals are 12-12 over the same time.
Atlanta has seen its lead in the National League East, which was 10.5 games on May 22, dwindle to three games over the Philadelphia Phillies.
St. Louis was 4.5 games behind the NL Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers on May 31 but now trail by seven games and is just a half-game ahead of the San Diego Padres and Miami Marlins in the race for the final wild-card spot.
The series opener features a pair of left-handers, as St. Louis’ Matthew Liberatore (3-5, 5.56 ERA) faces Atlanta’s Martin Perez (6-4, 3.00).
Atlanta has been in an offensive funk. During their current 4-12 skid, the Braves have been shut out twice and scored three or fewer runs 10 times.
“Our sport is different than every other sport,” Atlanta manager Walt Weiss said. “We play virtually every day for seven months, so you’ve got to get past all that stuff. You’ve got to keep your head down and keep doing the work. These guys are doing the work, they’re doing all that stuff. We’ve just got to fight through it.”
The strugglers are led by Austin Riley, who went 4-for-21 on the six-game West Coast road trip, saw his average fall to .209, and hasn’t homered since May 20. Ha-Seong Kim is on an 0-for-24 skid and is hitting .068. Drake Baldwin hit a home run in his first at-bat after coming off the injured list, but is 2-for-43 since his return and has seen his average fall from .303 to .255.
The Cardinals have been equally puny at the plate. St. Louis scored only three runs in its three-game weekend series against Miami.
“You look at the games, we’re successful, we come up with that key hit, that big hit and kind of keep it rolling,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “We haven’t been able to do that recently and that’s a big part of how we’ve gotten to this point.”
Two Cardinals will try to rekindle their offense. Ivan Herrera (22 games) and Alec Burleson (career-long 25-games) had their on-base streaks end in Sunday’s 2-1 win which snapped a four-game losing streak.
Rookie second baseman JJ Wetherholt is coming off back-to-back multi-hit games, giving him 23 on the season.
The Atlanta staff has been stabilized by the veteran Perez. With No. 2 starter Spencer Strider out for the foreseeable future, Perez has been a dependable arm. Since rejoining the rotation in mid-May, he is 4-2. He had a four-game winning streak end on Wednesday against San Diego when he gave up three runs in four innings, his shortest start of the season.
Liberatore has struggled over his last four starts, going 0-2 with a 10.34 ERA in June. He was rocked by Arizona on Wednesday for six runs in 5 1/3 innings.
This is the first meeting between the Braves and Cardinals this season. The Braves won the series 4-2 in 2025.
–Field Level Media
