The eve of the season’s end for the St. Louis Cardinals featured a matchup of a potential future rotation staple against the veteran that started the season wearing birds on the bat. Quinn Mathews squared off against former Cardinal Dustin May, but offense would be the real story of Saturday night’s game. Specifically, two swings by the Brewers would be the difference.
After both the Cardinals and Brewers went down 1-2-3 in the 1st inning, it was St. Louis that would score first. Jordan Walker led
off the inning with a single and then stole second after Leo Bernal flew out to center. Nolan Gorman walked giving the Cardinals runners on first and second, but Bryan Torres struck out. Fortunately, Thomas Saggese came through with a 2-out RBI broken bat single scoring Walker giving St. Louis an early 1-0 lead.
St. Louis would add to their lead in the top of the 3rd inning when Alec Burleson unloaded on a 98 mph four-seam fastball launching it 432 feet into the right-centerfield stands for one of his longest home runs of the year doubling the Cardinals lead to 2-0.
The Milwaukee Brewers would cut into that Cardinals lead in the bottom of the 3rd inning as Brandon Lockridge led off with a double. Hamilton reached laying down a sacrifice bunt advancing Lockridge to third, but would be thrown out by a perfect throw by Leo Bernal. Lockridge would score on the next play when Jackson Chourio hit a ball off of the right field wall that ended up only being a single after Jordan Walker duped him into thinking it was leaving the park, but played the ball off of the wall and fired a strike to second base. That’s all the Brewers would get in the bottom of the third after Bernal successfully challenged a ball four call by the umpire resulting in a strikeout of Contreras. Cardinals lead was 2-1 after 3 innings.
Manager Pat Murphy took Dustin May out of the game after 3 innings and brought in Kyle Harrison in relief. Dustin May’s stat line for the night included just 3 innings surrendering 3 hits, 2 earned runs striking out 5 and walking 1. On the other side of the diamond, Quinn Mathews was cruising along for the Cardinals with a fairly efficient first few innings as he completed the bottom of the 4th inning throwing just 67 pitches. He looked like he’s cruise through 5 innings maintaining the Cardinals lead, but that went south with one swing. Actually, it was two swings. The first was a chopped single that died in the grass in front of home plate that Leo Bernal couldn’t get to quick enough. The second swing was from Brice Turang who blasted an 84 mph slider way over the centerfield wall for a 2-run homer and a 3-2 Brewers lead. Mathews night would end after 5 innings as he gave up 3 earned runs on 5 hits while striking out 7 and walking just 1.
The ghosts of Cardinals pitchers past would happen again in the top of the 6th inning when the Brewers sent JoJo Romero to the mound. He struck out Burleson, Walker and Bernal because of course he did.
The Cardinals bullpen would take over in the bottom of the 6th inning starting with Gordon Graceffo. Unofficially entering the game in the bottom of the 6th inning would be sloppy St. Louis defense. William Contreras led off the inning with a single to right followed by a flyout to deep center from Christian Yelich. After Graceffo struck out Lara, Pratt hit a double to center that should not have been a double. Nathan Church threw the ball errantly over second which was fortunately backed up by Bernal, but it gave Milwaukee runners and second and third threatening to break the game open similar to how the late innings got away from the Cardinals bullpen Friday night. Gordon Graceffo rose to the occasion to make sure that didn’t happen as he struck out Mitchell to end the Brewers 6th and keep St. Louis within a run going into the 7th inning. Graceffo would also tough his way through the bottom of the 7th before Cade Winquest was brought in to deal with the Brewers in the bottom of the 8th and he managed to escape with no runs scored despite two runners on and some additional sloppy defense behind him.
Would the Cardinals offense mount a rally late in the game? Well, they went down in order in the top of the 6th, 7th and 8th so there would have to be a 9th inning hero if St. Louis was going to be victorious. It would be up to the heart of the Cardinals order: Burleson, Walker and Bernal. They would have to manufacture a run or runs off of Brewers reliever Ashby. Alec started the inning by gently grounding out to first. Walker grounded out to second for the second out. Leo Bernal quickly fell behind 0-2 in the count as Ashby had him fishing for sinkers on the outside corner. He eventually struck out to end the game.
The St. Louis Cardinals will wrap up their season Sunday afternoon in Milwaukee as Andre Pallante will face one of the NL’s most formidable pitchers, Jacob Misiorowski of the Brewers. First pitch is scheduled for 2:10pm central time at American Family Field and the final game broadcast of the year will be available via Cardinals.tv.
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