Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Nick Pivetta is struggling so far in June.

He will try to turn his month around against the slumping St. Louis Cardinals.

The Phillies and Cardinals open a three-game set on Monday night at Citizens Bank Park.

The teams are meeting for the second time in a month after splitting a four-game set in May at Busch Stadium.

Pivetta (4-6 Chris Lindstrom Jersey , 4.25 ERA) has an 8.36 ERA and opponents are hitting .352 with a .940 OPS against him through three June starts. The 25-year-old had a 3.26 ERA and .230 batting average against during his first 11 starts of the season.

Pivetta’s hardships were evident in his last start.

Facing the Colorado Rockies, he allowed six runs, eight hits and three walks in five innings of a 7-2 loss on Wednesday. It was the fourth straight start in which Pivetta took a loss.

“I think that his composure hasn’t been perfect, but he’s a young, developing pitcher,” Phillies manager Gabe Kapler told MLB.com after Pivetta’s start. “He’s going to have his bumps. He’s going to have hiccups along the way. I think this is just an indication of that.”

Pivetta did not pitch against the Cardinals when the Phillies faced them last month, but he saw St. Louis twice last year. Pivetta allowed seven earned runs and struck out 12 in 11 innings during those starts.

Pivetta will be facing a Cardinals team that posted a 5-0 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Sunday night but still has lost five times in its last seven games. The Cardinals (37-32) enter the series four games behind the first-place Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central.

Right-hander Miles Mikolas (7-2, 2.43) will be on the mound in the series opener. Mikolas, who spent the last three seasons pitching in Japan, leads the Cardinals with an 0.96 WHIP and his 2.43 ERA is the best in their rotation.

The Cardinals are 9-4 in Mikolas’ starts http://www.falconsauthorizedshops.com/authentic-kaleb-mcgary-jersey , but they lost in his last outing. He gave up three runs and six hits in six innings against the San Diego Padres in a 4-2 loss on Tuesday.

“He was throwing the ball well, and he came back and threw the ball well (after a three-run inning),” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny told reporters after Mikolas’ last start. “He’s on a nice roll.”

The Phillies are looking for their third series victory in a row. They are returning home for three games against the Cardinals after taking two of three against the Milwaukee Brewers over the weekend

Philadelphia was a 10-9 winner over Milwaukee on Sunday as Maikel Franco went 2-for-3 with a home run and four RBIs. The third baseman was making just his second start since June 6 and homered for the first time since May 26.

“Mikey has shown an incredible attitude recently,” Kapler said when he met with reporters after the victory. “He’s come to the ballpark and prepared, even when he has not been in the lineup.”

Rhys Hoskins also homered and is batting .333 (10-for-30) with four homers and 11 RBIs since returning from a broken jaw.

DES PLAINES, Ill. (AP) — There probably never will be a perfect football helmet. That doesn’t mean manufacturers won’t chase that goal.A tour of the Riddell headquarters makes that absolutely clear. Innovation, imagination, analytics, all with advancements in the product and enhancements of player safety as the objective.Those advancements have occurred in this century at varied paces. Some improvements have developed over a period of years, while others — particularly nowadays with so many steps forward in technology and analytics — happened rapidly and will continue to do so.Riddell is among four manufacturers who have received high marks in the NFL/NFLPA annual rankings Kendall Sheffield Jersey , which are revealed publicly, and a poster of the ratings is placed at every team facility. VICIS, Schutt and Xenith also scored well.“Our success in the ratings or the NFL poster and at Virginia Tech’s testing shows our desire to improve safety,” says Thad Ide, Riddell’s senior vice president of research and product development. “I think the level of player safety is changing for the better with information from the NFL and developments as a manufacturer.”Those developments have included Riddell partnering with digital manufacturing company Carbon to combine such additive manufacturing and production on a mass scale. By combining Carbon’s digital light synthesis technology, advanced software design tools and some innovative materials, Riddell’s new SpeedFlex Precision Diamond helmet hit the market as the third-highest ranked item on the NFL/union poster. It features Precision-Fit technology, which uses 3-D scans of players’ heads to create helmet liners that precisely fit each athlete’s head size and shape.It’s what Riddell calls “next-gen head protection,” a description that also can be applied to the VICIS Zero 1, the Schutt F7 LTD http://www.falconsauthorizedshops.com/authentic-john-cominsky-jersey , and the Xenith Shadow among other top-rated helmets. These represent the latest step in the search for the safest head gear on every level: professional, college, high school and youth.One innovation, Riddell’s InSite impact monitoring system, “brings a new perspective to the game that is different than just having a helmet that tests well,” Ide says. “We seek a more holistic approach.”That is evident simply from witnessingpresentations of the InSite Training Tool, which collects and analyzes an impact profile for each player in order to identify training opportunities that could decrease impact exposures. Riddell’s innovation lab features a series of impact tests for helmets. In one test, a helmet is struck at a variety of locations and from different directions and with varying intensities — the kind of hit that occurs so often and, many times, without warning on the field — to test rotational and linear forces that might lead to injury. In another test Qadree Ollison Jersey , the helmet is dropped from higher than five feet to test the reduction of impact force from different locations on the helmet. Results are judged on a pass/fail basis.The Precision-Fit process — though the helmet wasn’t available yet when he played, Peyton Manning was heavily involved in it as an adviser and still is — has led to 630 NFL players wearing them in their second year of eligibility. All 32 teams are using them, Ide says, and Riddell notes that its SpeedFlex Precision model was worn by more players last season than all other manufacturers’ models combined.“That far outstripped our expectations,” he says. “It’s not often a helmet is adopted that quickly.”Riddell also does extensive reconditioning of helmets from all football levels. That can range from cleanups and sanitizing to repairs, recertification, or even replacements.On the college level, Riddell used its “InSite” system with an unidentified FBS school to compile extensive data on all impacts in every practice session and game for every player. The info gathered indicated such things as which drills have the most and least number of head impacts; which days the overall practices were most and least effective; and which specific players needed extra monitoring during each drill.That sort of comprehensive data can upgrade preseason, in-season and postseason scheduling plans on a player safety scale, as well as on a performance level. It is being used by more than 800 programs and 30 Marquise Brown Jersey ,000 athletes across youth, high school and college football.“We can pinpoint position groups and then individuals to see who did what, or does a drill still work,” says Matt Shimshock, Riddell’s lead support coordinator for smart helmet technologies. “We’ve measured 5 million impacts. This is plug-and-play data.”And it’s just really the beginning of the next step in the quest to develop the safest helmets possible.“Advances are happening on many levels,” Ide notes. “We want people to know about all of them.”