Welcome to Baseball Heaven: Cardinals making most of time at home
The surging St. Louis Cardinals have the majors' best record and are in the midst of baseball's best home start since division play began in 1969.
The Chicago White Sox are scuffling, especially on the road, but they have reason to be optimistic with ace Chris Sale pitching against a team not named the Minnesota Twins.
The Cardinals look to win 10 straight at home for the first time in 11 years, while Sale tries to become the second pitcher in history to record at least 10 strikeouts in eight consecutive games in Tuesday night's series opener.
St. Louis (51-24) pushed its winning streak to six by sweeping the Chicago Cubs with a 4-1 victory Sunday. The Cardinals dropped the Cubs 11 1/2 games back in the NL Central and are nine ahead of second-place Pittsburgh -- easily baseball's biggest division lead.
"It's important because this was the week we had in front of us," said Jason Heyward, who is batting .395 with four homers, three doubles and 10 RBIs in his last 11 games. "... A division game, when the outcome is a win for you, you put more distance between you. But we got to take the same mindset every night."
They're certainly playing with a winner's mindset at Busch Stadium, going 29-7 with nine straight victories since losing 1-0 to Milwaukee on June 1. They last won 10 consecutive home games in 2004.
The White Sox (32-42) have lost 10 of 12 on the road and are 4-12 in their last 16 overall. Sunday's 5-4 defeat in Detroit was especially painful after Chicago blew a 4-0 lead in the eighth inning and lost on a walkoff homer.
Sale (6-4, 3.02 ERA) may help take away some of the sting from that loss if he can match Pedro Martinez's 1999 record of eight straight starts with at least 10 strikeouts.
Sale became the first pitcher since Randy Johnson in 2001 to strike out at least 10 in seven consecutive games Wednesday in Minnesota. He has totaled 85 strikeouts with 31 hits and eight walks over 52 innings in his last seven starts and has dominated hitters all season. His 34.4 percent of swings that miss is the best in baseball since Martinez's 35.8 mark in 1999.
"It's cool, but it'd be a lot better if we were winning more games, for sure," Sale said.
Sale struck out 10 Twins but wasn't particularly sharp, yielding six runs and nine hits in 6 2/3 innings of a 6-1 loss. The left-hander is 1-3 with a 6.46 ERA in four outings against Minnesota and 5-1 with a 1.88 ERA in his 10 other starts.
The three-time All-Star is making his first appearance against the Cardinals and is 3-0 with a 1.72 ERA in his last six interleague outings.
Lance Lynn (5-4, 2.84) has also enjoyed pitching against the opposite league, going 3-1 with a 1.02 ERA in six interleague starts at Busch Stadium. That includes his only outing against the White Sox on June 13, 2012, when he yielded three hits with a career-high 12 strikeouts in 7 1/3 innings of a 1-0 win.
In his first outing since June 7 after a stint on the disabled list for a strained forearm, the right-hander allowed two hits over six scoreless innings in Thursday's 5-1 win at Miami. He has a 1.46 ERA in his last four starts.
Adam LaRoche is 1 for 8 against Lynn and batting .135 in 13 games against the Cardinals since 2013.
