Pittsburgh didn't play out August the way it usually does. Instead of selling off veterans, Cherington added four bullpen arms around the deadline — Luke Weaver, Kirby Yates, Lake Bachar and Camilo Doval — while trying to end a playoff drought that's stretched a decade. That's a real swing for a franchise that hasn't operated that way in years, and it puts a deeper, better bullpen behind Ashcraft than St. Louis will see from most opponents down the stretch.
The Pirates have had their own bumps lately — they were swept in run differential by the Dodgers before beating the Padres twice in San Diego and dropping the finale. But that's a team playing meaningful, competitive baseball in late August; the Cardinals are the ones with a 4-and-a-half-game hole in the wild-card race and dwindling patience for a turnaround. St. Louis did get a jolt from top prospect Joshua Báez, who homered in each of his first three big-league plate appearances after his mid-August call-up — the rare bright spot in an otherwise miserable stretch.
Both clubs are banged up in different ways. Pittsburgh is without catcher Endy Rodriguez, who had hip labrum surgery this week, and outfielder Ryan O'Hearn is still working his way back from a quad issue — but the Pirates at least have their ace, Mitch Keller, already shut down for the year rather than hanging over the rotation as a question mark. St. Louis is dealing with fresher, messier wounds: Masyn Winn's thumb fracture and Everson Pereira's suspected broken hand both happened within the last week and a half, gutting the left side of the infield and the outfield at the same time.
Two games get played in this series before Sunday, so a lot can still shift — a bullpen inning burned, a lineup shuffled, another arm added to that St. Louis injury list. But barring a dramatic turnaround from the home club, this reads like a team playing out the string hosting one that's actually trying to go somewhere.