Saint Louis Cardinals (50-45) AT New York Mets (47-48)
July 19, 2011 at 7:10 PM EST
Opening Line:  NYM -125, STL +105
Current Line:  NYM -120, STL +100
Opening Total:  8
Current Total: 8

SP:  STL- Kyle Lohse; NYM- Dillon Gee

It’s always darkest before dawn, and the Mets are hoping that their offense will have some life injected into it when Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran come back tonight.  Jose Reyes had been sidelined since the 2nd of July with a bad hamstring and Beltran missed three games with the flu.  The two were the lone All-Star representatives for the Mets, but trade rumors have surrounded both players.

Reyes hit 1 of 3 in rehab work at single-A Brooklyn, and still leads the majors with a .354 average.  His average over .70 better than last season and he has already hit more triples this year, 15, than he did all of last year with 10.  He’s also only struck out 26 times in 350 plate appearances.  Six of his last seven games have been multi-hit games, as well.

The Mets have dropped five of their last six games and managed only 3 hits in a makeup game Monday night.  In all four of those games, they managed less than 2 runs, and all four  were losses.  In the 15 games that Jose Reyes was on the DL, his replacements hit .197.

“Any team in this league that loses guys like that are going to have a tough time getting offense generated,” Mets’ manager Terry Collins resigned himself to say. “But we still have to plug away and put the ball in play and spread the ball around and run the bases a little bit better and be aggressive on the bases, and we just didn’t do that (Monday).”

What might be best of all for the Mets with the all-star duo returning is the way they have played against the Cardinals.  Reyes is hitting .382 in his last six home games against the Cards, while Beltran is at .517 with two homers and 9 RBIs, over his last seven.  Against Kyle Lohse, Beltran has gone 20 of 37 with 4 HRs.

And it’s not that Lohse is a bad pitcher, because he isn’t  His ERA is in the low threes (3.32) and he has a winning record at 8-6.  In his last four starts against the Mets on the road, however, he has gone 0-3 with a 10.38 ERA.  On August 5th 2009, Lohse gave up 5 runs in 2 2/3rds innings work, as the Mets were defeated 9 to nothing.  He has lost four of his last five decisions after starting the season 7-2.  In fact, after his first 9 games, he boasted an ERA of 2.41.

Lohse in many senses is still riding on the coattails of his own success in 2008, when he went 15-6 with a 3.78 ERA.  His WHIP in 2009 was about the same (1.39 to 1.32), but his ERA went up nearly a full run, somewhat paradoxically.

This season Baseball Prospectus expected a 10-11 record with a 4.75 ERA.  Lohse was horrible last year at 4-8 with a 6.55 ERA.  His arm, however, has been weakened by surgery and age, and his stuff certainly isn’t as good as it used to be.  At this point, he is no longer a top of the rotation player, but should remain effective enough to start for a couple more seasons, at least.

Lohse attributes the problems to his location of the ball, but that really isn’t all there is to it, obviously:

“Just location,” Lohse self-assessed.  “That’s what it comes down to with me. I’ve got to locate my pitches better. Just missing, just trying to be too fine or whatever it is.”

Dillon Gee will take the mound for the Cardinals.  Gee is 8-3 with a 3.76 ERA this season, and is starting his first career game against the Cardinals.  He has lost both of his last starts, giving up nearly a run an inning on average.  He gave up 8 runs in 11 innings in the last two home games.

Gee has shown an ability to pitch up to 200 innings of work, evidenced by his 161 inning 13-8 record at Triple-A Buffalo.  At only age 25, he strikes out a high percentage of batters, by utilizing excellent control over the ball.  In his first 33 major league innings, however, he struckout a mere 17 of the hitters.  He has been compared to Johnny Cueto and Marco Estrada, in terms of his upside.

In his last two starts, he gave up 10 runs in 12 2/3rds innings, while dropping both of his lat two home games.  In his previous four decisions to that, he had a 1.77 ERA over 5 starts.

The Cardinals have won 4 of the last 6 games while the total has gone over 3 times and under 3 times in the past 6 matchups, all of which were in 2010.

The betting lines for this seem about right.  The Mets are sending a better pitcher to the mound in Gee, who should be able to help keep the Cardinals’ run total low enough that the Mets won’t even have to do that well offensively.