The St. Louis Cardinals (60-59) are now just a game above .500 after dropping the first game of their series with the Cincinnati Reds (58-61) on Monday night by a score of 6-1. The offense continued its struggles with runners in scoring position in this contest while Sonny Gray blew up, giving up six runs, including three home runs in what seems to be a troubling trend for the Cardinals’ ace.

Kyle Leahy and Shawn Armstrong looked solid in relief of Gray, which is encouraging for a bullpen that has been struggling as of late, but the issue continues to be whether or not this Cardinal offense has what it takes to win games down the stretch. Obviously Gray’s performance was bad yesterday, but it is the offense that continues to fall short time and time again. If they don’t turn it around quick, things may unravel in a way that the Cardinals will not be able to recover from.

Probable starting pitchers

• Erick Fedde (8-5, 3.28 ERA) will make his third start for the Cardinals tonight. Fedde’s first start against the Cubs was not good, but he rebounded to pitch really well in his second start in a Cardinals uniform against the Rays, going five innings while allowing just one earned run. St. Louis needs a good start from Fedde to stop the bleeding on this bad stretch of baseball.
• Hunter Greene (8-4, 2.90 ERA) will start for the Reds tonight. He’s been awesome this year for Cincinnati, so the Cardinals are in for a challenge if they want to get the offense back on track. While they didn’t do a great job against him earlier this year when they faced Greene, the Cardinals did put up a run one Greene while knocking him out of the game after just 4.2 innings of work.

St. Louis Cardinals starting lineup, August 13th

1. SS Masyn Winn
2. DH Alec Burleson
3. C Willson Contreras
4. 3B Nolan Arenado
5. LF Brendan Donovan
6. 1B Paul Goldschmidt
7. RF Lars Nootbaar
8. 2B Nolan Gorman
9. CF Victor Scott II

Cincinnati Reds starting lineup, August 13th

1. 2B Jonathan India
2. SS Elly De La Cruz
3. C Tyler Stephenson
4. CF TJ Friedl
5. LF Spencer Steer
6. 1B Jeimer Candelario
7. DH Ty France
8. RF Jake Fraley
9. 3B Santiago Espinal