First pitch is 6:45 PM CT on Monday, June 15, the front end of an interleague-flavored Padres-Cardinals set at Busch. San Diego comes in at 35-32, St. Louis at 37-29, and these are two teams arriving from very different places — the Padres patching a rotation together with duct tape, the Cardinals riding a starting five nobody picked to be playoff-relevant. The Cardinals just spent a week reminding the league they exist. Before dropping the Mets finale 5-4 on Wednesday, they had ripped off something like 6 straight, including a 7-0 dismantling and a 9-2 laugher in Queens. Jordan Walker has been the engine — his 4-RBI night in that 9-2 win was the kind of swing that turns a hot streak into a story. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for a Chaim Bloom-led front office that shipped out Sonny Gray, Nolan Arenado, and Willson Contreras. Instead, Matthew Liberatore, Michael McGreevy, and Dustin May have turned the rotation into a genuine strength. San Diego is the more complicated story. They're 7 over .500 in spite of Manny Machado looking nothing like Manny Machado — his OPS is sitting around .632 and he has been an easy out for most of the season. The counterweight has been Fernando Tatis Jr., who finally broke a 207-AB power drought with a walk-off bomb against the Reds last Tuesday and has reportedly been hitting close to .480 over his last 7 games. If that version of Tatis is the one who shows up in St. Louis, the Padres have a puncher's chance regardless of who's on the mound. The injury sheet is the real concern for San Diego — and it's brutal on the pitching side. Yu Darvish (elbow), Joe Musgrove (elbow), Nick Pivetta (forearm), German Marquez (forearm), and Matt Waldron (forearm) are all on the shelf. Marquez and Waldron are at least getting close — Marquez tossed 4 scoreless in Triple-A on Sunday, Waldron is lined up for a rehab assignment — but right now Mike Shildt is asking guys to make starts that weren't in the original plan. Jake Cronenworth (concussion) and Xander Bogaerts (paternity) leave the infield short-handed on top of it. The series-opening stylistic clash is fun: a Padres lineup that has to scratch runs together against a Cardinals staff suddenly leaning on contact and ground balls. St. Louis is finding ways to win one-run games (see the 6-5 over Cincinnati on June 6) and they're getting that done at home, where Busch tends to play fair-to-pitcher-friendly in June heat. Pencil this in as the kind of game that hinges on a single late-inning at-bat — Tatis vs. whoever the Cardinals trust in the 8th.