Mike Matheny didn’t divulge any trade secrets about his Game 4 starter before Monday evening’s contest.
With the best-of-five National League Divisional Series tied at 1, the St. Louis Cardinals manager won’t announce Tuesday’s starter until after Game 3 against the Cubs. Matheny wouldn’t even reveal his candidates -- the tops ones likely are believed to be John Lackey or Lance Lynn -- but noted all hands are on deck for the critical third game. Michael Wacha faces Jake Arrieta in Game 3 at 5:07 p.m. CST as the series resumes in Chicago.
“We'll just see how things play out today, see how things go tonight with who we use and how long we need to use them,” Matheny said. “And we'll go into tonight's game (with) about just about everything we have, so we'll look and see how things play out as far as the result goes, and then make a decision afterwards.
“Just about everybody is ready.”
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Whereas teams normally send out the next day’s pitcher at the pregame press conference, St. Louis presented second baseman Kolten Wong. For his part, Lynn told reporters he’s planning on starting Game 4 unless he’s informed otherwise. It’s believed the Cardinals would opt to use Lackey if they lose Monday and face elimination on Tuesday.
“When we get to this point of the season, a lot of our own ideas of how it should play out for us individually are kind of thrown in the backseat to what's best for our club,” Matheny said. “That's the kind of team that we've had. We've been very fortunate to see an amazing amount of selflessness to where guys are putting the club in front of their own individual -- sometimes own individual goals. That's hard to do, especially in the world that we're in that's so individually statistic driven, but overall a guy like Lance Lynn knows that we're going to do what's best for our team and he's going to come out and do everything that he can to help.”