PITTSBURGH — Even the Pirates could not stay afloat through the promised Tsunami.
Having found his sea legs, Carlos Martinez pitched eight shutout innings on 100 pitches and towed the Cardinals to a series sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park. Harrison Bader staked Martinez to a three-run lead with home run in the second inning, and Martinez rode the wave from there for a 3-0 victory. The righthander scattered five hits, struck out three and came one inning shy of the shutout that his manager says Martinez can smell.
A winner in consecutive games after going nearly three years without a win as a starter, Martinez made good on his forecast that the “Tsunami” — his nickname — was coming.
The Pirates never got a runner to third base against him.
Alex Reyes closed the game for his seventh save of the season.
The Cardinals swept a three-game series at PNC Park for the first time since 2016. They have swept consecutive series against NL Central foes and return home to host the New York Mets for a four-game series having won four consecutive and eight of their past 10 games.
Bader hit his first home run of the season in his third game back from the injured list, where he spent most of spring training and the first month of play. Pirates starter Wil Crowe walked leadoff hitter Paul DeJong in the second inning, allowed a single to Tyler O’Neill, and then could not contain the inning before Bader came up. With Martinez on deck, Bader drilled a 87-mph slider into the left-center seats for all the runs the game offered.
An ongoing concern for the Cardinals in the past week resurfaced along the Allegheny River in the fourth inning and will trickle after them as far as opponents take it.
Again a pitch from a Cardinals’ pitcher veered up and in and drilled an opponent in the face. This past week, reliever Genesis Cabrera hit Bryce Harper in the face with a pitch, and followed that with a pitch into the ribs of Didi Gregorius. Earlier this season, Reds rookie Jonathan India was hit by a pitch from a Cardinal, and on Sunday in the fourth inning Martinez let loose a fastball that caught Pirates’ catcher Jacob Stallings in the face.
He remained in the game.
In the wake of the frightening moment with Harper, Shildt acknowledged that even if the Cardinals don’t have the intent to hit or pitch above the shoulders, they would have to face the possibility of a reputation. He told reporters that “people are going to be rightfully upset that guys got hit in some really ugly places.”
Before Sunday’s game, three of the top five teams in the majors who have hit batters come from the NL Central, which has been the land of bruises for several years now. Exchanges between the Cubs and Cincinnati, and friction between the Cardinals and those teams have yielded high counts of HBP. The Cubs led the majors with 24 hit batters coming into play Sunday. The Cardinals moved into second with 21 after two on Sunday. Milwaukee also ranked in the top five. The Cubs and Cardinals also were among the leaders when it comes to walks, and the Cardinals were a top third team in wild pitches to give a global sense of a staff’s control.
After the pitch hit Stallings, Martinez crouched near the mound and watched as the Pirates tended to their catcher. Stallings remained on his feet. He strolled to first.
And Martinez briskly ended the inning from there.
He was rarely threatened through his first seven innings of work, needing 96 pitches to get sidestep five hits and get 21 outs. Martinez went a stretch in the game where nine of his 10 outs were either strikeouts or on a groundout. He didn’t have a perfect inning until the seventh inning, but he also didn’t have any inning bloat his pitch count. He got three groundouts in the second inning around a double to minimize the threat and got some help from the fielders with a double play in the fifth and another in the sixth to unplug those innings.
