PITTSBURGH — Any adrenaline rush from the St. Louis Cardinals’ sixth win in eight games and their chance to sweep a second consecutive division series subsided swiftly in the seventh inning Saturday as Jordan Hicks tried to shake a sensation loose from his right arm.
The Cardinals have adopted an ultra-protective, ultra-conservative approach with their ultra-gifted righthanded reliever, so when he winced after delivering a 98-mph fastball the team’s trainer was at the mound almost as fast as the ball got back there. The Cardinals had an ample lead, added to it with help in the ninth, and would cement a 12-5 victory against the Pirates at PNC Park.
They awaited details on whether they also lost.
Hicks left the game with trainer Chris Conroy after throwing 18 pitches and facing three batters. During the game, a Cardinals official described the move as “precaution” after Hicks experienced tightness in his right arm. Hicks is nearly 23 months removed from Tommy John surgery to rebuild his right elbow, and because he opted out of the 2020 season to focus on rehab from that surgery he has only this past month of regular season pitching since June 2019. The Cardinals have eased him into late-inning usage, expanded the number of innings he’s had assigned so he could throw more pitches, and done so with the idea he would eventually be back at closer.
Hicks is expected to be re-evaluated Sunday.
The Pirates scored a couple runs in the inning Hicks had to leave behind, but it was not long before the Cardinals widened their lead with a five-run ninth. Nolan Arenado added an RBI triple to his two-run double earlier in the game for three Saturday and five RBIs already this weekend along the Allegheny River. Paul Goldschmidt scored four runs. Justin Williams homered at the end of the game, just as Paul DeJong claimed the early lead for starter Jack Flaherty with a three-run homer in the first inning.
Flaherty became the major’s first 5-0 starter this season after throwing six innings and allowing three runs on six hits, offset by nine strikeouts.
The Cardinals’ first-inning rally started with a double that got past the Pittsburgh first baseman’s glove but not the PNC Park ball attendant’s.
Tommy Edman was given second base but not a chance to stretch for a triple after his hard hit glanced off Colin Maron’s glove and was retrieved in foul territory by one of the Pirates’ employees manning the foul lines. After the interference, Edman stood in scoring position before Trevor Cahill threw his third pitch. Edman blitzed home on Goldschmidt’s RBI single. In their first two at-bats of the game, Goldschmidt and cleanup hitter Arenado swapped walks and singles. In the first, Arenado’s walk moved Goldschmidt over to second and brought No. 5 hitter DeJong to the plate.
In Yadier Molina’s absence, DeJong has subleased the fifth spot in the Cardinals’ order and really searched for some success with all the runners on base ahead of him.
The Cardinals’ shortstop entered Saturday’s game batting .115 in 29 plate appearances with runners in scoring position. He had struck out only five times, but he’d only connected for three hits. Later in Saturday’s game, he flashed some of the bad luck necessary to have an average that low when two sublime plays by Pirates infielders robbed DeJong of a base hit, once with a runner in scoring position. In the first inning, DeJong put the ball where a fielder could not reach.
He hit a three-run homer to left-center field, landing the baseball right on a tarp that features the Pirates’ logo with his signature polka-dot bandana tugged over his mouth as a mask, not above his eyepatch.
DeJong’s sixth homer of the season gave Flaherty a 4-0 lead before he threw a pitch.
It’s the kind of tailwind he’s pitched with all season.
Even in Flaherty’s rocky opening-day start, the Cardinals scored 11 to swamp the six he allowed Cincinnati. The Cardinals were unbeaten in the righthander’s first five starts of the season in part because they scored 39 runs in them, averaging almost eight runs of support per outing for their young, rising starter. Four runs in the first set quite a pace for the Cardinals’ offense — one that would slow as the Pirates pecked away. A sacrifice fly in the second, a couple of RBI singles in the third, and suddenly that sturdy 4-0 lead had encountered termites and been chewed down to 5-3.
Flaherty froze it there during his start by retiring 10 consecutive.
“I love how he’s attacked with his heater,” Shildt said. “He’s had real conviction with his heater. He’s been able to locate it, and he’s able to throw a slider on the plate under the zone, make it look like a strike out of the hand. I like the fact that he’s used his curveball well. He’s likely known as a fastball-slider guy — showing a little different speed, a little different thought process into that hitter’s head that makes everything else play up.”
Flaherty showcased that mix of pitches and the mess it makes of hitters with a series of strikeouts through the middle innings. The righthander struck out nine total, and four of them came in a six-batter span from the fourth through the sixth.
He got the four on three different pitches.
Opposing pitcher Cahill went fishing after an 0-2 slider at 85 mph for a swinging strikeout in the fourth. The slider was on the plate, low, and then off it to avoid Cahill’s bat. In the fifth, Flaherty got ahead on No. 3 hitter Bryan Reynolds and then dropped a 79-mph curveball on him. The curveball plunged out of the zone before it was plucked by catcher Andrew Knizner just before kissing the dirt. Reynolds looked back to see he had missed it. The next batter, Moran, got Flaherty to a full count.
On his 87th pitch of the game, Flaherty blazed a 97-mph fastball past Moran to end the fifth. Flaherty started the sixth, his final inning, with a strikeout on a 95-mph fastball.
After the back-to-back RBI singles in the third inning, Flaherty did not allow another hit until an infield dribbler against the shift in the sixth. He got an exceptional running, reaching catch from Harrison Bader in center and nearly a barehanded robbery from Arenado in the sixth to assist him to another quality start.
The score narrowed once the bullpen became involved.
That concern was minimal when eclipsed by Hicks leaving the mound.
