Last night the Cardinals started a series with the Detroit Tigers in Detroit. Once again the Cardinals showed how overmatched they are when compared to solid AL teams. Speaking of solid AL teams, the Detroit Tigers must be for real. Most people around baseball are waiting for the magic curtain to go down on the Tigers, yet they keep on winning. They are not just beating the poor quality teams either, as they did in the beginning of the season, but they are beating solid ball clubs—like the Cardinals.

Today the Cardinals are sending Jeff Suppan to the mound. He will face off against Kenny Rogers. The Tigers are a -148 favorite and the Cardinals are a +138 dog. The under/over for the game is currently at 9. In last night’s game, the Cardinals offense got off the snide and scored six runs. Unfortunately, for them, the Detroit offense put together ten. Verlander got the win and Carpenter received the loss. The Cardinals slide downward against AL teams continues. The good news is there are only two more games against the Tigers. The bad news is there are two more games against the Tigers.

At home, Kenny Rogers is roasting up opposing teams. His home ERA is a tasty 1.76. In May, his performances worsened a bit, but he has been rock solid in June. Earlier this month, he shut down Boston and the White Sox—two top AL clubs. In the Boston game, he worked 7 masterful innings and allowed just one lone run over 5 hits and one walk. He struck out 7. The White Sox outing was more of the same. Again, he went 7 solid innings. He allowed two runs—one home run—over 6 hits. He struck out 5 in that game.

His past two outings have been against sub par teams—Devil Rays and the Cubs. He worked 8 innings in both of those outings, allowing one and two runs respectively. Looking over his recent performances, bettors can count on 7-8 innings of work. He will most likely allow 5-8 baserunners in tonight’s performance. The Cardinals are not that offensively capable right now, so 5-8 baserunners could mean 1-3 runs.

Jeff Suppan is pitching for the Cardinals and he has his work cut out for him. His road ERA is very disgusting. An 8.04 ERA is not what you want to see in a starting pitcher for a good club. Looking over the April, May and June performances, he has remained constantly at this level. He is not trending up or down. Looking over past performances this season, there are things that stand out—home runs and walks.

Suppan is prone to the home run ball. In fact, he gave up at least one home run in 9 of his 14 starts. He gave up 3 home runs in two outings—against the Brewers and Padres. How about those walks? Suppan is a walk machine. In 12 of 14 games, he walked at least two batters. Walks can kill a team and Suppan hands them out like they are going out of style. Tonight we can expect that he will walk at least two, possibly hand out a home run and work 5-7 innings.