Cubs' Justin Steele aims for another win over Cards

Chicago Cubs starting pitcher Justin Steele has enjoyed more success against the St. Louis Cardinals than against any other opponent this season.

He will get another crack at them Thursday when the Cubs face the Cardinals to open a four-game series in St. Louis.

Steele (10-3, 2.95 ERA) is 3-0 with a 2.95 ERA in three starts against the Cardinals in 2023. In his latest outing, the left-hander allowed two runs on six hits in 6 1/3 innings as the Cubs beat St. Louis 4-3 on Friday.

"I felt like I was executing pitches," Steele said. "For the entirety of the game I was doing what I wanted to do, executing pitches, putting the ball where I wanted to. Sometimes they put enough wood on it to find a hole. I felt like I was controlling my pitches when I needed to."

He struck out nine batters in the victory and walked one.

"Classic Justin, very nice job of keeping them off-balance," Cubs manager David Ross said. "Had that one inning had to grind through some soft contact again. ... I thought the efficiency as the game went on was really good. He found his rhythm and (was) just typical."

Steele is 3-1 with a 3.86 ERA in five career starts against St. Louis. He has been especially effective against Dylan Carlson (0-for-10), Andrew Knizner (1-for-8) and Brendan Donovan (1-for-5).

The Cubs won three of four games against the Cardinals last week. Overall, Chicago has won five in a row and seven of its past eight games to stay within reach of the National League playoff race.

On Wednesday, the Cubs rallied from a 7-2 deficit to defeat the Chicago White Sox 10-7 and sweep the two-game crosstown series.

The Cardinals come into this series after winning two of three games against the Arizona Diamondbacks in Phoenix.

St. Louis will counter Steele with Miles Mikolas (6-5, 4.33 ERA), who will try to rebound from one of his worst starts of the season. The right-hander allowed the Cubs five runs on 11 hits and a walk in five innings during a no-decision on Saturday.

"You look at Miles' start, he pounded the zone with the majority of his pitches," Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. "A lot of balls in play. A lot of them fell in for hits."

Mikolas needed 102 pitches to get 15 outs.

"They had a couple hard-hit balls," Mikolas said. "I feel like they got on base with some hard hits, then they were able to score those runs fighting off good pitches, kind of squeezing some groundballs through the infield, a couple bloopers. Hats off to fighting off good pitches, but it's frustrating that I gave up a couple runs. I felt like they didn't hit a whole lot of stuff hard."

Mikolas is 0-0 with a 5.79 ERA in two starts against the Cubs this season and 5-3 with a 2.51 ERA in 18 career games against them, including 16 starts.

Dansby Swanson (6-for-17, two doubles, homer, three RBIs), Patrick Wisdom (3-for-11, homer, four RBIs) and Nico Hoerner (9-for-22) are among the Cubs who have hit well against Mikolas in their career.