It was a wild one at Busch on Saturday when the Cardinals and Dodgers squared up for Game 2 of this three-game weekend series. Yesterday, before the series began, I expressed concern over the Dodgers being in town and how it might be time to get a little worried about this team.
Fortunately, I’ve had to eat my words, as the Cardinals rallied to win 2-1 in walk-off fashion to take the series from the defending World Series champions. They now have a shot at a sweep, which would be quite satisfying, given the magnitude of the opponent.
Let’s discuss this one.
Pitcher’s Duel In Matinee
The starters were Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Erick Fedde. Yamamoto ended up being more efficient, pitching six scoreless innings, but Fedde followed up his strong performance in Texas with a solid 5.1 scoreless innings of his own.
Fedde ran into a little trouble in the third inning when he loaded the bases for Will Smith, and the Dodgers catcher lined one down the left field line that fortunately stayed foul, or it would have cleared the bases and given the Dodgers the lead.
But he settled in and got the Cardinals out of the jam. When trouble arose again in the sixth, it was time for Oli Marmol to make the move to Steven Matz, who got two big outs to keep the game scoreless.
Late-inning heroics (and wildness)
In the bottom of the eighth, the scoreless tie was finally broken, but in the most unconventional way. Alec Burleson hit one off of Dodgers pitcher Ben Casparius, whose throw to first wasn’t in time to nab Burly and also a little wild.
But because it was wild, that allowed Masyn Winn some leeway to try and score the go-ahead run, and he barely made it in. So, the Cardinals turned things over to Ryan Helsley to try and finish things off in the ninth. It didn’t go well. With one out, he put Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts on. He managed to strike out Freddie Freeman, but the ball got away from Pedro Pages, which allowed Ohtani to score the tying run.
Los Angeles still had Casparius pitching in the bottom of the ninth, and Nolan Gorman, who has been hitting better lately, greeted him with a ground-rule double and was later subbed out for pinch-runner Jose Barrero.
Then with two strikes, Pedro Pages bunted, hoping to record a sacrifice, but Casparius bobbled the ball and rushed his throw to first, which caused it to go a little high and pull Tommy Edman off the bag. And for that split second that the former Cardinal wasn’t on the bag, Pages got in.
That set up the perfect scenario: runners on first and third with nobody out. It was then that Oli Marmol went to his best weapon off the bench in Nolan Arenado, who had been given the day off.
The Dodgers played the infield in and even brought an outfielder into the infield grass, leaving left field wide open. And sure enough, Arenado hit one out to left that got down and allowed the winning run to score, giving the Cardinals a 2-1 victory.
For all of my talk about being worried, I must say I was impressed by today’s win. The guys punched back again after being knocked down, showing tremendous fight when it was needed most.
And to hold one of the best offenses in baseball to one run over two games is nothing short of remarkable, and it’s an encouraging start to a very tough stretch of games.
I’ll be back tomorrow to recap the series finale, and hopefully a series sweep!