Sunday Night Baseball: Cardinals vs. Tigers
The first Sunday Night Baseball game on Peacock was a real dud, as the Guardians got blanked 8-0 by the Mariners. We’ll see if the encore presentation is better with Cardinals vs. Tigers on a cool, crisp night in the Motor City. Cleveland was actually no-hit for six innings in that game by Emerson Hancock, so the bar for being better offensively than that is extremely low for St. Louis and Detroit.
Detroit is looking for the sweep here, as yesterday’s game was called due to rain in the ninth inning with the Tigers holding an 11-6 lead. It was not a suspended game, so the teams will start fresh today, with Kyle Leahy on the mound for the Redbirds and Keider Montero for the Big Striped Cats.
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How to Watch Cardinals vs. Tigers
Where: Peacock
When: Sunday April 5, 7:20 p.m. ET
Cardinals vs. Tigers MLB Odds
Detroit Tigers -143 // St. Louis Cardinals +119
Total: 8 (-112/-108)
Cardinals vs. Tigers Game Preview
This will actually be the first MLB appearance of the season for Montero, who was recalled after making a four-inning start at Triple-A. Montero pitched in the World Baseball Classic for Team Venezuela and threw 4.1 innings over one start and one relief outing. Because Venezuela won it all, Montero was with the team for a long time and only threw five innings in MLB camp, so the Tigers opted to send him to Triple-A and get a little extra work in.
He threw four shutout, one-hit innings and now he’s back in the bigs, coming off of a season in which he posted a 4.37 ERA over 90.2 innings of work. Montero is a swingman, in that he can start or relieve for the Tigers, making 12 starts over 20 total appearances. Montero is also back with the Major League roster because Justin Verlander is dealing with hip inflammation, so he was sent to the minors as part of the numbers game, but he probably could have earned a bullpen spot had he been in Florida all spring.
Montero has allowed 35 homers in just 189 MLB innings, so he definitely has a major long ball issue. The wind is expected to be blowing out in Detroit tonight, but on a cool, damp night, so it’s hard to see a lot of carry from fly balls in this one.
Leahy made 62 appearances for the Cardinals last season and only one of them was a start. This will be his second start of 2026, so he’s doubling that number right away. As a reliever, Leahy had a 3.07 ERA with a 3.04 FIP, but his 4.43 xERA is definitely a concern coming into this season when he’s going to have to turn lineups over. xERA encompasses batted ball quality into its formula and the fact that Leahy’s Barrel% was nearly 10% with a Hard Hit% over 44% suggests that he got hit a lot harder than his traditional metrics suggest, but that he got pretty fortunate with the sequencing of hits and outs.
For example, opposing batters hit .264 with men on base, but only .196 with men in scoring position, so he was able to dodge a lot of damage with some batted ball luck in higher-leverage situations. He was a starter, albeit not a very good one, in the minors and the Cardinals aren’t expected to do much this season, so trying to see if he can be a big league rotation arm isn’t a bad course of action.
As most of us expected, the Cardinals are off to a slow start. They’ve scored 35 runs in eight games with a .220/.299/.352 slash and a 90 wRC+. Their xwOBA of .313 is 20 points higher than their actual wOBA at .293, so they’ve made some decent contact that they haven’t been rewarded for, but there’s not a ton of power in this group.
The Tigers are off to a .247/.329/.384 start with 39 runs scored over their eight games, including the 11-run outburst yesterday. They’ve been very inconsistent, scoring 5+ runs in five of their games to this point and they’ve also been shut out twice already.
Cardinals vs. Tigers Prediction
It’s a little bit of a heavy number given where Montero is to start the season, but Leahy does not profile as a guy who can start at the MLB level. We’ve at least seen Montero do it and the weather conditions today should help with his home run problem. Also, with Montero likely to be a four-and-fly type of guy, the Tigers will probably tap into their bullpen first and that unit is stronger in my estimation than what St. Louis has to offer in relief.
Pick: Tigers -143
