Cardinals vs. Brewers Prediction: Misiorowski Looks to Finish Off the Sweep

Jacob Misiorowski has been must-see theater all season, and the last-place Cardinals are the latest team unlucky enough to face him with a series sweep on the line.

Quick take:

• Pick: Brewers -1.5
• Why: Misiorowski’s the best strikeout arm in the National League, and a Cardinals lineup that’s lost eight of its last ten has no answer for triple-digit heat
• The number to watch: 247 strikeouts in 169.1 innings — Misiorowski leads the NL and is averaging north of 13 K/9

Milwaukee has nothing left to play for in the standings — the division was wrapped up nearly two weeks ago and the Brewers have already locked in the National League’s No. 1 overall seed — but that hasn’t stopped them from playing like a team trying to set a franchise wins record, which, at 102-59, they’ve already done. St. Louis, on the other hand, is finishing out the string at 77-84, eliminated from any realistic postseason math and dropping the first two games of this series by a combined 12-6 margin.

Sunday’s finale at American Family Field pits the game’s most electric young arm against a Cardinals offense that’s simply run out of gas. St. Louis dropped both of the first two games of this series, an 8-4 defeat Friday followed by a 3-2 heartbreaker Saturday, and now walks into a get-away-day matinee with a pitcher who’s been the most talked-about arm in the sport for the last three months. For a Cardinals team playing out a lost season, there’s still professional pride on the line in avoiding the sweep — but the opponent standing in the way makes that a difficult task.

Why Vegas Isn’t Buying a Cardinals Upset

The number tells the story here. Milwaukee opened as roughly a -235 favorite on the moneyline and the market hasn’t budged much, settling around -246 to -231 depending on the book, with St. Louis sitting at +198 to +210. The run line has the Brewers at -1.5 (-110ish) and the total is hovering right around 7 runs, per the live MLB odds board. Books know exactly what they’re pricing: a rookie sensation with a sub-2.00 ERA against a lineup that’s averaging barely three runs a game in its last ten.

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The gap in these two team’s trajectories over the last two weeks is about as stark as it gets in late September baseball. Milwaukee has won eight of its last ten and carries a four-game win streak into Sunday, while St. Louis has lost eight of its last ten and enters on a three-game skid. One team is playing meaningful, sharp baseball heading toward October; the other is simply trying to get to the finish line healthy.

Showing 10 of last 10 meetings

Misiorowski Is Playing a Different Sport

It’s worth pausing on just how absurd Misiorowski’s rookie-ish campaign has been. Since a midseason call-up, the right-hander has gone 15-5 with a 1.86 ERA and a 0.80 WHIP across 29 starts, striking out 247 batters in 169.1 innings — first in the entire National League. He’s been even nastier since the All-Star break, allowing just 15 earned runs over his last 58.1 innings with an 80:15 strikeout-to-walk ratio. St. Louis’ Andre Pallante will counter with a respectable 12-8 mark and a 3.61 ERA, but respectable doesn’t cut it against an offense-suppressing arm like this.

Jordan Walker has been one of the lone bright spots for St. Louis all year, and if the Cardinals are going to scratch across any runs, it likely runs through him. William Contreras and Jackson Chourio give Milwaukee’s lineup thump even on a day when the Brewers might not need much of it — Chourio’s been a 25-homer threat all year, and Contreras keeps grinding out quality at-bats even in a game that means nothing for playoff seeding.

It’s also worth noting what Misiorowski has done to left-handed hitters specifically, a group he’s held to an absurdly low average all year. St. Louis leans on several left-handed bats in the middle of its order, which only compounds the matchup problem — this isn’t just a good pitcher against a cold offense, it’s a good pitcher who happens to be especially nasty against the exact profile of hitter St. Louis needs to produce for.

Misiorowski has struck out 247 batters this season — more than any other pitcher in the National League.

That strikeout rate isn’t just a counting stat — it’s the reason St. Louis’ lineup, already stumbling through a 2-8 stretch, is a bad matchup on paper before first pitch even happens. When a starter is missing bats at an 11.9 K/9 clip, a struggling offense doesn’t get many free swings to work with, and the Cardinals haven’t shown the kind of contact discipline recently that beats swing-and-miss stuff like this.

St. Louis did manage to push a couple of runs across in Saturday’s 3-2 loss, so this isn’t a lineup with nothing at all. But stringing together the kind of rallies needed to hang with a 102-win team on getaway day, against arguably the hottest arm in baseball, is a tall order.

Prediction and Best Bet

Milwaukee closes out the sweep behind another dominant Misiorowski start, and St. Louis’ bats stay cold against a pitcher nobody in the league has solved consistently in months.

The pick:

1. Prediction: Brewers 6, Cardinals 2
2. Best Bet: Brewers -1.5

Take the run line here — Milwaukee’s covering far more often than not with Misiorowski on the mound, and this Cardinals lineup hasn’t given anyone a reason to expect a shootout.