ST. LOUIS — For innings, for days, for most of this homestand, the Cardinals had been watching other teams have all the fun of watching baseballs soar over the wall while their home ballpark remained less than hospitable to their swings.
Shoulders, like fly balls, slumped as they dropped at the warning track.
The lift came at the right time.
Harrison Bader turned on a two-strike pitch to revive the Cardinals in the seventh inning and Nolan Arenado, the Cardinals’ reliable source of power, followed with a home run. In the same inning, the two Cardinals had done what the team had not since April 15: hit two home runs in the same game. Those two bolts out of the blue and beyond left field carried the Cardinals to a 7-5 comeback victory against Arizona at Busch Stadium.
The Cardinals trailed 5-3 when for the second time in the game Andrew Knizner keyed a rally with a leadoff single. Paul DeJong followed with a double that put the inning in motion. A groundout brought Knizner home to cut the Diamondbacks’ lead to a run.
With one swing, Bader gave the Cardinals the reversal.
His first homer of the season was a two-run shot that claimed the lead for the Cardinals. Arenado, a favorite to win the National League’s player of the month award for April, followed two batters later with his sixth homer of the season for some insurance. Ryan Helsley handled the final two innings of the game to secure his first save of the season.
In the eighth inning, Helsley struck out Ketel Marte with a 103.1-mph pitch — the fastest pitch thrown this season in the majors.
The Cardinals had one home run in the past 10 games, had watched Arizona turn big, bad Busch Stadium into a slingshot for the league’s worst offense, and were trailing in the game because of that inability to muster much power.
The Diamondbacks had 15 extra-base hits in the series before the Cardinals had their fifth. Nick Ahmed had two home runs in the span of three plate appearances after having only five in his 473 plate appearances last season. And he had out-homered the Cardinals at their home to put to the Diamondbacks in position to win a four-game series. When Arizona started the weekend they had a .178 average as a team and were flirting with one of the lowest team averages in the first months of the season. Not just this season. Ever.
Ever.
And yet, buttressed by the two solo homers Saturday and four more home runs Sunday, the Diamondbacks took a lead into the bottom of the seventh inning.
Jordan Luplow personified the Diamondbacks’ awakening at Busch. He started Sunday with a .091 batting average and ended the seventh batting 368 and 405, as in feet. He hit a solo homer off Jordan Hicks in the first inning for Arizona’s first run of the game, and he followed that six innings later with a solo homer to extend the Diamondbacks’ lead. Between those bookends, Christian Walker drilled a pitch 432 feet for a homer to center and Ahmed had his second homer in as many days.
Ahmed’s homer off rookie Andrew Pallante broke a 2-2 tie.
The Cardinals took their first lead in the third inning by getting the most from one single. Knizner provided it with a leadoff shot to shallow center. That was enough for a two-run rally — with some help. The Diamondbacks offered the Cardinals a walk, an error on a groundball back to the pitcher, and suddenly the Cardinals had conjured enough runs to take a 2-1 lead.
Walker’s homer of Hicks in the fourth tied the game and put Hicks on the brink of turning the fourth inning over to the bullpen.
The next batter walked to assure it.
The right-hander continued his retooling as a starter on the job and in the standings by reaching into the 60-pitch range and pushing toward completing five innings. The Cardinals would have welcomed either, and Hicks got to 63 pitches and 3 1/3 innings. Both are career highs. It took him 24 pitches to navigate around a homer and a walk and get two strikeouts in the first inning. He was behind in the counts and gained efficiency on the go. Deuces were wild across his pitching line. Hicks allowed two runs on the two homers and those were the only two hits he allowed to go with two walks. He doubled-up the theme with four strikeouts.
With enough offense found to mount a comeback, the Cardinals left one remaining question after the victory.
Tommy Edman left the game in the seventh inning due to an undisclosed reason. He singled in the fifth and appeared to slow himself around first instead of making a dash for second. Edman did play second in the top of the sixth inning, but was removed from the game after that. An update on his injury status was not immediately available.
