Cardinals Look to Exploit Struggling Angels in Anaheim Nightcap
A Cardinals team sitting four games above .500 rolls into Angel Stadium tonight against an Angels squad that has been one of baseball's worst stories at 39-61. There's no model read to anchor this one, but the raw numbers tell a story worth paying attention to.
St. Louis arrives in Anaheim with real momentum on its side — at least on paper. A 51-47 record puts the Cardinals in the conversation for meaningful baseball down the stretch, and they're facing a Los Angeles club that has lost 22 more games than it has won. Kyle Leahy is expected to start for St. Louis, while Jose Soriano is set to take the mound for the Angels. Neither pitcher has supporting data in tonight's preview, so the offensive matchup may end up doing the heavy lifting in terms of what to watch.
The Cardinals' offensive engine right now is Jordan Walker, and the numbers are hard to ignore. Walker is hitting .292 with 22 home runs and 76 RBI on the season — a stat line that puts him among the more productive hitters in the National League at this stage of the year. That combination of average and power is exactly the kind of profile that can punish a struggling pitching staff, and the Angels have given opponents plenty of opportunities in 2026. On the Los Angeles side, Nolan Schanuel leads the club with a .279 average, Zach Neto has 19 home runs, and Jo Adell has driven in 53 runs. Those are respectable individual numbers, but they belong to a team that is 22 games under .500, which tells you something about the depth of the roster around them.
Our model doesn't have a validated read on this game tonight, so we're not going to manufacture a lean where one doesn't exist. What we can say is that the record disparity between these two clubs is significant, and Walker's production gives St. Louis a genuine difference-maker in the lineup. Whether Leahy and Soriano keep this game close or the offenses take over is the real question. First pitch is at 10:00 PM ET from Angel Stadium, with ESPN carrying the broadcast.