Today, at 5:00 p.m. ET the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals square off in Game 1 of the best-of-five National League Division Series live from Busch Stadium in St. Louis. The game can be live streamed here. Pittsburgh fans can hear all the action at KDKA-FM 93.7 while St. Louis fans can do the same by turning their dials to KMOX 1120 .
The Cardinals owned the right to host this game by winning the National League Central division this season, while the Pirates clawed their way into the game by knocking off the Cincinnati Reds 6-2 in the NL Wild-Card game Tuesday. Now, Pittsburgh turns its attention to another division rival after a thrilling September race between all three teams that saw the MLB have its first division since 2002 to boast three 90-win teams.
A.J. Burnett (10-11, 3.30 ERA in the regular season) will take the mound for the visiting Pirates while Adam Wainwright (19-9, 2.94 ERA) toes the rubber for St. Louis.
The Pirates are making their first postseason run since 1992 and Tuesday's victory was the team's first playoff win in 21 years while the Cardinals return to the postseason for the fourth time in five years. With this afternoon being the 20th time this season that the two teams will meet, they know what to expect out of one another.
"We ought to know each other by now," Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said per MLB.com. "But we're constantly looking for adjustments and seeing what guys are doing and trying to be prepared and have a game plan. So it really doesn't matter that it's someone that we played a lot. We just probably have more history, but they have equally as much, so there's really not an advantage there."
The Pirates, meanwhile, are glad to still be in it after Tuesday's do-or-die game.
"It's one of the things you've got to do to continue to move the organization forward, for this team to move forward," Pirates manager Clint Hurdle said after the wild-card victory, according to MLB.com. "You have to keep knocking down things like this."
The Pirates next task won't be easy as the team looks to knock down a St. Louis team that won an NL-leading 97 games this past season, and a team with plenty of playoff experience.
The Pirates took the season series by a very close 10-9 margin, but anything can happen in October.
Marlon Byrd waited 1,250 regular season games to make his first postseason appearance Tuesday, and it was worth the wait as he belted a homer in his first at-bat. Byrd, who was traded from the Mets to the Pirates midseason, hit .291 with 24 homers and 88 RBIs in the regular season.
St. Louis second baseman Matt Carpenter led the league with 126 runs scored and 55 doubles in the regular season, and was tied for first in hits with 199, while Pirates third baseman Pedro Alvarez tied for the NL lead in homeruns with 36.
Both these teams are looking for a good start to the NLDS, but only one can win when the series kicks off this afternoon.
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