After trading first place in the National League Central back and forth with each other for the majority of the summer the St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates will meet in the best-of-five division series starting tonight.
The Cardinals were able to take the division crown by getting hot at the end of the year and finishing on a six game winning streak. The Pirates had to play another division rival, the Reds, in the Wild Card game in order to advance to take on the Cardinals.
The two teams met 19 times over the season with Pittsburgh winning the season series 10-9. It was about as close as two teams could get with the Cardinals scoring an aggregate of two more runs over the series.
"We ought to know each other by now," Cardinals manager Mike Matheny told MLB.com. "But we're constantly looking for adjustments and seeing what guys are doing and trying to be prepared and have a game plan."
After resting for about a week the Cardinals will be sending Adam Wainwright to the mound where he will be facing A.J. Burnett. Burnett is one of the few on the Bucs who has previous playoff experience from his days with the Yankees.
"I guess the main thing is, over in New York, it's expected every year, you know?" Burnett told the Associated Press. "You tend to get in there a couple of weeks before the season ends. And this one was more of a 'Shock the world, we're going to do it, we made it!'"
Unlike the Pirates most of the Cardinals roster has been battle hardened by the playoffs in years past with a lot of players still on the team from the 2011 World Series winners. Despite missing the playoff run in 2011 Wainwright has pitched well in the postseason and he has pitched especially well against the Pirates this year going 1-0 with a 3.00 ERA in three starts, the Associated Press reports.
"They probably know how I'm going to approach their at-bats, and we probably know how they're going to do ours," Wainwright said. "So the key to all of that is execution. You can have the greatest plan in the world, but if you don't execute it, it's garbage."
Game One is tonight at 5:00 p.m. ET and it will be airing on TBS. A live stream can be reached through this link.
* Stats for this article were obtained at Baseball-Reference.com.
