Pittsburgh Pirates vs St. Louis Cardinals Prediction, Odds and Picks for Today, 05/21/26

St. Louis won Game 1 of their series with the Pirates on a walk-off home run before Pittsburgh won Game 2 in blowout fashion. Game 3 presents a starting pitching matchup between Dustin May of the Cardinals and Braxton Ashcraft of the Pirates. May has tossed 4 consecutive quality starts for the Cardinals, and he has achieved that feat in 6 of his last 7 outings. He began the season with 2 poor outings but has since bounced back and pitched well for St. Louis. May did already face Pittsburgh, tossing 6 innings of 2-run ball on 4/27. Pittsburgh still won that game, however, and they did get 9 runners on base against May in that start. Now with a 2nd chance at him, Pittsburgh should capitalize on his 2nd percentile hard-hit rate. Pittsburgh enters Thursday sitting 3rd in wOBA against right-handed pitching.

St. Louis enters Thursday 15th in wOBA against right-handed pitching. They will face Braxton Ashcraft for the 2nd time this season. The first matchup resulted in Ashcraft’s worst outing of the season. The right-hander tossed just 4.1 innings with 9 base runners and 6 earned runs allowed. I still find Ashcraft to be the stronger starting option moving forward, as his underlying metrics strongly support his success this season. Ashcraft’s 3.09 ERA is backed by a 2.87 xERA and 3.18 FIP, and his ability to generate ground balls should play well today. Albeit a game I am not rushing to bet, I do lean towards the Pirates at current pricing.

Pittsburgh Pirates vs St. Louis Cardinals prediction: Pirates ML (-130) available at time of publishing. Playable to -135 odds.