(Busch Stadium) The St. Louis Cardinals will be without Jhonny Peralta tonight as the third baseman is again dealing with discomfort in his left thumb.
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“Jhonny’s thumb is sore,” shared Mike Matheny on starting Greg Garcia instead of Peralta in the lineup. “He took a swing yesterday–that was part of the double-switch that we did, just needed to get him out. Seems like some of the check swings or the swings and misses, something’s just still kind of grabbing there. He actually had it looked at today and the doctors could see still flared up a little bit–not from the surgically repaired spot, but from the spot that set him back last time. So just trying to get ahead of that and figure out what we’ve got to do.”
Peralta dealt with the same issue earlier this month and had just one hit since the All-Star break, a 438ft home run on Saturday.
“They just explained it to me that there was a ‘hotspot’ in there,” continued Matheny. “Something that got re-aggravated and it just kind of seems to keep showing up. Try and get a couple steps ahead and then something will happen–it’s a violent movement, especially when you start talking about your hands when you’re going through the swing mechanics. It’s something we’re going to have to keep working our way through.”
Peralta wasn’t activated from the disabled list until June 7th after tearing a thumb ligament and requiring surgery in Spring Training.
GRICHUK STARTING
–After dealing with some vision issues at the plate yesterday, Randal Grichuk reports that he is ready to go and will be starting in left field tonight.
“I feel good–good to go,” he confirmed this afternoon. “That was kind of weird, never happened to me before but it went away and I was good to go the rest of the game.”
The outfielder had his first at-bat interrupted with what was described as blurriness, perhaps due to the heat.
“We don’t really know what it was,” said Grichuk. “It was kind of one of those things maybe the swing caused it–the jerking of the neck. We don’t really know. Luckily, it didn’t come back the rest of the game so it’s good.”
CARDINALS STARTING LINEUP
Tommy Pham, LF
Aledmys Diaz, SS
Stephen Piscotty, RF
Matt Holliday, 1B
Yadier Molina, C
Randal Grichuk, LF
Jedd Gyorko, 2B
Greg Garcia, 3B
Mike Leake, P
photo credit: Bill Greenblatt/UPI
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