St. Louis at Arizona

This series hasn't produced a single laugher. St. Louis stole the opener Friday by a single run, Arizona answered Saturday by two, and neither margin left much room to spare. Andre Pallante gets the ball for the rubber match after a rough three-start stretch that has inflated his ERA, but the underlying process, ground balls induced, walks limited, hasn't collapsed the way the runs allowed suggest. On the other side, Eduardo Rodriguez's ERA under 2.30 looks like a Cy Young case on the surface, but the numbers that strip out luck paint a pitcher due for some regression, not the shutdown arm his record implies. Arizona's bullpen had its own hiccups in this series, including a blown save Friday that helped hand St. Louis the opener. Given how tight both games have been, and given the gap between what these two starters have shown and what they've actually been lately, I don't need St. Louis to win this one outright, just to keep it within a run or two like every other game in this set. Take the Cardinals, who win on the runline today as long as this stays close.