A brutal start against the last place Pirates
Well that sucked.
The Cardinals (47-39) absolutely stunk up the joint Monday night at PNC Park. Not only did they get shutout by the lowly Pirates (36-50) by a score of 7-0, but St. Louis flirted with getting no-hit until Victor Scott broke up Andrew Heaney’s bid with two outs to go in the sixth inning.
Andrew Heaney looked like a Cy Young winner Monday night, throwing 6.2 shutout innings. Heaney struck out seven against one walk, and ended up allowing three hits. Erick Fedde, on the other hand, got walloped: five innings, 10 hits, seven earned, three walks, and zero strikeouts.
Despite the final score, St. Louis was very much in this game…well, for the first half at least. Believe it or not, St. Louis even got its very first batter aboard when Brendan Donovan drew a lead off walk!…only to be promptly erased by Masyn Winn hitting into a double play. It was all downhill for St. Louis after that.
Fedde flirted with disaster in home half of the first inning. He surrendered a leadoff home run to Spencer Horwitz, then followed that by with giving up a double to left field by Andrew McCutchen and a single by Bryan Reynolds. To Fedde’s credit he didn’t give up a crooked number (hold that thought!) and got Nick Gonzales to line into a 1-3 double play, and Oneil Cruz to line out to second. Despite giving up back-to-back-to-back base hits to start the game, Fedde held the line and kept it a 1-0 game after one inning.
While Fedde did what he could to keep St. Louis in the game, his offense hung him out to dry. After Heaney issued that leadoff walk to Donovan, he retired 16 straight Cardinal hitters and St. Louis only had two balls reach the outfield over that stretch.
Remember how I said we’d revisit Fedde not giving up a crooked number in the first inning? It ended up happening, just four innings later.
Pittsburgh teed off on Fedde in the fifth, posting six runs off of seven hits. Joey Bart led off the inning with a single to left, and moved to third when Isiah Kiner-Falefa bunted his way aboard. Those two were brought home when Horwitz struck again, this time with a two-run double to left field, and upped Pittsburgh’s lead to 3-0.
Pittsburgh wouldn’t be content with just adding on two runs. Cutch reached base off of a fielder’s choice and advanced to second when Reynolds singled. Gonzales tagged Fedde for his third extra base hit surrendered with a double to right field that scored McCutchen and left runners at second and third with just one out.
Trailing 4-0 and in desperate need to keep the game in reach, Oli called for an intentional walk of Cruz to load the bases and set up a potential inning-ending double play. It didn’t work.
Ke’Bryan Hayes redirected a 1-0 cutter from Fedde up the middle to give Pittsburgh a 6-0 lead, and then Tommy Pham, swinging on the first pitch, singled to left to score Cruz and make it a 7-0 game.
With the game in hand, the only remaining question was whether or not Heaney would no-hit the Cardinals. Working with that 7-0 lead in the sixth, Heaney got Saggese and Pagés to strike out swining, but VS2 finally broke up the no-hit bid with a single to left field. But Heaney wouldn’t blink and responded by striking out Brendan Donovan on three pitches, and got him to go down looking.
Heaney was pulled in the sixth after giving up two hits in the frame, though not before he got Burleson to hit into a 4-6-3 double play. Willson Contreras was the last batter Heaney faced, and Contreras singled to left field. Heaney’s night was done after 95 pitches and he handed the ball over to Chase Shugart and he was just as dominant as Heaney: one hit given up in 2.1 innings.
St. Louis will try to bounce back, and maybe score a run or two, tomorrow evening at 5:40 with Andre Pallante taking the mound opposite of Paul Skenes. Skenes has a career 0-4 record against the Cardinals, here’s hoping it drops to 0-5.