The St. Louis Cardinals have the most wins in the majors (33) and more road wins (19) than any other club. They will try to add to those totals Tuesday against the cross-state rival Kansas City Royals.
The I-70 series began with a 6-3 win by the Cardinals on Memorial Day, as Yadier Molina hit a two-run homer and finished with four RBI to lead the way. Allen Craig contributed three hits and drove in a run, while Adam Wainwright held on for his seventh win (7-3) even though he permitted three runs and 12 hits in eight innings.
Edward Mujica worked around a hit in the ninth inning to nail down his 15th save and push St. Louis' road record to 19-9.
"We're playing good right now. We've got some good offense," Molina said. "Right now we're seeing the ball pretty good and finding some holes. We're showing the people that we've got a pretty good team."
St. Louis leads the NL Central by 1 1/2 games ahead of Cincinnati and has won 19 of its last 25 games.
The Cardinals, who are 5-2 on an eight-game road trip, will welcome the Royals to Busch Stadium on Wednesday and Thursday.
Taking the mound for St. Louis in Tuesday's finale at Kauffman Stadium will be rookie Tyler Lyons. Lyons made his major league debut in a 5-3 win at San Diego on May 22 and delivered seven innings of one-run ball. Lyons is filling in for injured starter Jaime Garcia.
"It was everything I could have asked for," Lyons said of his debut.
Lyons is the third Cardinals rookie to earn a victory in his first big league start of the season, joining Shelby Miller and John Gast. Gast, though, was just placed on the disabled list.
Kansas City is mired in a six-game losing streak and has dropped 10 of 11 games. Royals starter James Shields continued his downward spiral and fell to 2-6 Monday after he yielded all six runs and nine hits in six innings. He struck out four and walked five batters.
"I wasn't commanding the fastball today, and when you don't command the fastball, you're behind in the count and you start walking guys," Shields said. "It definitely wasn't the brightest game in the world, but we've got to keep grinding. I didn't pitch very well today, I put that game on me."
David Lough collected four hits, Alex Gordon went 2-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored and Billy Butler finished with two hits and scored a run.
Before the Royals make a two-game stop in the Gateway City, Ervin Santana draws the start Tuesday and is 3-4 with a 3.14 earned run average in his nine trips to the mound. Santana is mired in a personal three-start losing streak and is winless in his past four outings -- all KC losses.
Santana was roughed up for five runs and eight hits in 7 2/3 innings of last Thursday's 5-4 loss to the LA Angels, but managed to strike out eight batters without issuing a walk. The right-hander won his lone start against the Cardinals and is one win shy of 100 in his career.
Kansas City lost four of six meetings with St. Louis in last season's I-70 Series and is just 4-9 in the past 13 matchups between the club's.
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