Daily Sports: More Cardinal Baseball In The Spotlight

The St. Louis Cardinals just finished a disastrous series in Pittsburgh, where the Cards lost four of five games and their hold on first place in the NL Central. It was the continuation of a lousy road trip for St. Loo, who was swept last weekend in Atlanta. The road doesn’t get a lot easier for the Redbirds tonight, as they face yet another contender on the road with a visit to Cincinnati, as St. Louis again leads up the daily sports TV agenda.

Cardinals-Reds is one of two good games that will be shown to the country by MLB Network at 7 PM ET tonight. The Arizona Diamondbacks pay a visit to Fenway Park for an interleague series against the Boston Red Sox. The D-Backs will welcome Brandon McCarthy back from the disabled list, while the Red Sox new toy, Jake Peavy, will make his first start over the course of the weekend.

The NFL Network will have its usual day-long coverage of training camps, but they won’t have the usual 8 PM ET recap. Instead, the league’s network is starting to get the focus on Canton for the upcoming Hall of Fame festivities this weekend. There’s a special feature called “The Road To Canton”, and tonight’s subject is Warren Sapp.

If the NFL is focused on Canton, that can only mean there’s a scheduled football game around the corner, and the Hall of Fame Game is indeed on Sunday night. It’s Dallas-Miami this year (8 PM ET, NBC).

TheSportsNotebook is gearing up for football previews, but before we delve into that, the foundation for the final eight and a half weeks of the baseball season has to be put in place.

Yesterday we ran features on the pleasant surprise that is the Cleveland Indians, and the miserable bust that is the Washington Nationals. I also supported the comments of Baltimore Orioles’ manager Buck Showalter regarding Alex Rodriguez and any potential suspension.

Today the focus is going to take a different tack. We’re going to review the preseason win props for each American League team—the Over/Under number on win totals posted in Las Vegas—and see how everybody is doing against market expectations. The National League will come up either later today or tomorrow, and each league will have an accompanying team feature.