ST. LOUIS — Another Cardinals outing by a starting pitcher was short-circuited by injury Friday night at Busch Stadium when left-hander Kwang Hyun Kim exited the game after throwing one warm-up pitch before the fourth inning. Kim, trailing Cincinnati, 3-0 in a game the Cardinals lost 6-4, left with what was announced as lower back tightness.
This was not necessarily a new injury for Kim, who had been set back in spring training by back stiffness and had begun the season on the injured list.
Earlier in the week, of course, staff ace Jack Flaherty had gone out for probably a couple of months with a torn oblique muscle and a couple of weeks before that, right-hander Miles Mikolas had to leave his first outing of the season after a recurrence of a flexor tendon problem. Kim had just finished batting in the third when he nearly beat out a bouncer over the mound but was thrown out by shortstop Kyle Farmer.
In the top of the third, Kim had breezed through the Reds after having a rough second inning. Kim’s 89-mph fastball was swatted over the left-field fence twice in a span of four Cincinnati hitters in the second.
First, Tyler Stephenson clouted his third homer of the season. With one out, Kim hit Farmer with a pitch and Jonathan India ripped his fourth home run to give the Reds a 3-0 lead.
Kim had permitted only one homer in his first six starts but India’s home run was the fourth allowed by Kim in the left-hander’s past three starts.
This inning basically was enough to send the Cardinals to their third loss in succession and fifth in six games although they rallied for three in the ninth, two scoring on Tommy Edman's double and another on a double by Matt Carpenter.
Luis Castillo, who had been 1-8, wasn’t exactly fooling the Cardinals either early on. Paul Goldschmidt lined to right in the first and both Tyler O’Neill and Carpenter lined full-count pitches to second baseman India in the second with Yadier Molina on first with a leadoff walk.
But Castillo an All-Star in 2019, retired 10 men in succession from the second into the fifth. That was before Edmundo Sosa launched his first major league home run. Sosa clubbed a change-up 419 feet to left on Castillo’s first pitch to him in the fifth.
That cut the Reds’ lead to 3-1, with reliever Seth Elledge, who already has batted twice this week what with all the Cardinals’ pitching problems, still on the mound after bailing reliever Jake Woodford out of a fifth-inning scrape.
Sosa’s drive could have been a game-turner and so could have left fielder Tyler O’Neill’s spectacular sliding catch of Shogo Akiyama’s foul ball as O’Neill banged into the low box-seat wall in the sixth. O’Neill’s cap came off his head after he rammed the wall but the ball remained in his glove and O’Neill remained in the game.
But the Reds reversed that momentum in the sixth when Castillo, who was hitting eighth, sailed a double over the head of center-fielder Dylan Carlson and off the wall. India, who had walked with two out, scored the Reds’ fourth run and left-hander Andrew Miller, who had been out with a right foot injury, made his first relief appearance since April 29.
Shortstop Sosa stopped the bleeding by dashing into short left center for Mike Freeman’s popup to end the inning.
The Cardinals had just three hits in six innings off Castillo before Castillo was relieved. When Miller hit Akiyama in the backside with a pitch in the seventh, the Cardinals had hit four Reds batsmen after plunking three the night before. The Cardinals already had a wide lead in the major leagues in this department.
But Miller dodged trouble in the seventh when he allowed a single, a double and walked a man intentionally with the help of a double play on left-handed-batting Jesse Winker. It was started by shortstop Sosa, who was lined up as a second baseman and pivoted neatly by third baseman Nolan Arenado, who was stationed at a normal shortstop position.
O’Neill made another outstanding defensive play in the eighth when he chased down India’s single and threw to second to catch India in an attempt to stretch the hit to a double.
The Cardinals took one more run at trying to run down the Reds in the eighth when Carlson doubled off Ryan Hendrix with two out and Goldschmidt walked. But Arenado, one for his last 24, struck out on a Heath Hembree slider.
The Reds then tagged Junior Fernandez for two runs in the ninth, one scoring as Fernandez, after fielding the speedy Akiyama's tapper, tried unwisely to start a double play via second base as another runner trotted home from third. Akiyama was safe at first easily on the back end.
Carpenter, who had been robbed of two hits by second baseman India, doubled to left center to drive in a run in the Cardinals' ninth after the initial decision that he had been hit by a pitch was overturned. Pinch hitter Andrew Knizner drew a walk from left-hander Sean Doolittle and Edman corked a double to left.
Carlson singled hard to left for his third hit, with Edman stopping at third. Right-hander Michael Feliz wrapped it up for the Reds by striking out Goldschmidt on three pitches.
