Sunday Night MLB: Cubs vs. Cardinals
A busy and exciting week of baseball wraps up with one of the sport’s longest-standing rivalries. Cubs vs. Cardinals at Busch Stadium is the highlight game for Sunday Night Baseball on Peacock, but tonight’s game will also be broadcast on NBC. Fans will be treated to a battle of southpaws, as the Cubs send out Jordan Wicks in hopes of getting a better start than he produced last time, while the Cardinals throw left-hander Matthew Liberatore.
See how others are wagering on the game with our VSiN MLB Betting Splits.
See player prop projections for Cubs vs. Cardinals from OptaAI.
How to Watch Cubs vs. Cardinals
Where: NBC/Peacock
When: Sunday May 31, 7:20 p.m. ET
Cubs vs. Cardinals MLB Odds
St. Louis Cardinals -118 // Chicago Cubs -102
Total: 8.5 (-105/-115)
Cubs vs. Cardinals Prediction
Pick: Cardinals -118
With last night’s win, the Cubs are now 1282-1227-19 all-time against the Cardinals per Sports-Reference, so this will be the 2,529th head-to-head meeting in the regular season. Incredibly, despite the long histories for both organizations, they have only met in the postseason once, with the Cubs winning the series 3-1 back in 2015.
Some of those games have meant more than others and, in the grand scheme of things, tonight’s game is probably about in the middle of the pecking order, as this is the rubber match of the series. St. Louis came away with a 6-5 win on Friday night, but Chicago answered with a 6-1 dub on Saturday behind another strong effort from Ben Brown. The winner of this game will own sole possession of second place in the NL Central heading into the new week, as the Cardinals host the Rangers and the Cubs have an off day to return home to welcome the Athletics on Tuesday.
Based on the numbers for the starting pitchers, the offenses need to come to play tonight. Wicks made his first MLB start since September 17, 2024 last time out and got bombarded for eight runs on nine hits in just 4.1 innings. He struck out five and only walked one, but the Pirates banged out nine hits, including one homer. He didn’t locate well, with eight hard-hit balls and two Barrels, so he’ll have to make some adjustments tonight. Prior to his recall from the minors, Wicks had a 4.44 ERA over seven starts and 26.1 innings in the minors with a disappointing 20/12 K/BB ratio.
Liberatore had the swing-and-miss stuff working last time out against the Brewers with 10 strikeouts, but he still has a 4.76 ERA, 5.45 xERA, and a 4.65 FIP in his 11 starts covering 56.2 innings this season. Even with that huge strikeout effort last time out, his 21.4% K% is below the league average for starting pitchers and he’s allowed 10 home runs already. The 10-strikeout outing was a continuation of his previous start with nine strikeouts in just 4.2 innings against the Pirates, but even with all those punchies, he has still allowed seven runs on 14 hits in those two efforts.
On the whole, Liberatore has held the opposition to two or fewer runs in five of his 11 starts, but has given up 4+ runs in five of them as well. It should also be noted that two of his better starts were his first two starts of the season with just solo homers allowed against the Rays and Mets.
The Cubs rank 10th in wOBA against LHP on the season, slashing .253/.346/.385 with a 22.6% K% and a 10.8% BB%. The Cardinals are 17th in wOBA, slashing .235/.317/.372 with a 16.9% K% and a 9.4% BB%. Given Liberatore’s strikeout uptick and St. Louis’ bat-to-ball skills against lefties, it does seem like they’ll be putting more balls in play tonight, but will that convert into runs?
Recently, neither team has hit lefties well, but the Cubs have been at the bottom of the barrel. Their .235 wOBA is almost 30 points worse than anybody else over the last 14 days, slashing just .185/.255/.250. It is only a sample size of 105 plate appearances. The Cardinals are slashing just .198/.263/.396 against lefties in their last 100 PA, but they have only struck out 13% of the time.
Both bullpens are in good shape tonight, as all hands should be on deck.
For those looking into player prop bets, Carson Kelly has been Chicago’s best hitter against LHP with a .347/.448/.531 slash and Nico Hoerner is batting .290/.347/.449 in that split. Ivan Herrera has a .286/.444/.500 slash against LHP for the Redbirds, so he’s a good option, as is Masyn Winn, who has a .311/.353/.422 slash.
