PITTSBURGH _ It didn't take many hits for the Cardinals to shake their offense awake just in the nick time, and that was a good thing because for a long time they didn't have any.
Pirates started Mitch Keller took a no-hitter through six innings, but when he didn't come out for the seventh, the Cardinals' offense did. For the second time in as many games, the Cardinals swamped the Pirates with a late crooked-number inning that erased a lead and set sail for their own victory. Tyler O'Neill's two-run double started what became a five-run seventh inning and led to a 5-4 victory Friday at PNC Park.
The rally was the Cardinals' largest of the season, and their biggest deficit they've overcome since August of last year, against the Pirates.
The Cardinals (25-24) surfaced above .500 for the first time on this road trip, and that allowed them to keep ahead of the Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers for second in the NL Central.
The rally netted Jake Woodford his first MLB win.
Genesis Cabrera pitched the final five outs and struck out three to score his first save and hold that one run lead seized in the seventh inning. All it took for the Cardinals to snap out of their six-inning slumber was a few walks, a hit batter, and not having to face Keller.
The rally in the seventh inning did have a potential cost that left the Cardinals worried after the game. The moment that loaded the bases without a hit was a pitch that struck Yadier Molina on his left wrist. That's the same wrist that Ryan Braun hit with a bat earlier in the week, and Molina took another bat to the glove in the Pirates' series for a catcher's interference. Molina went through a series of exams in Milwaukee that included an X-ray and a CT scan, neither of which revealed any fractures in the left hand or wrist.
He returned to the lineup the day after Braun's bat bruised him, but the pounding continued, and in the eighth inning Saturday he yielded to Matt Wieters. Molina was initially diagnosed with a bruised wrist.
His condition was still being evaluated late Saturday night.
At the tipping point of the seventh inning, the Cardinals had more hit batters than their batters had hits. Pirates reliever Geoff Hartlieb hit Molina with an inside pitch. Molina tried to press his hands to his chest to avoid it, but could not. Molina took his base to load them _ and still the Cardinals did not have a hit in the game.
Keller took a no-hitter through six innings. He sped through the Cardinals' order twice by the end the fifth inning, and then he retired the top of the lineup in order without allowing a ball out of the infield in the sixth inning. The Cardinals looked as ill-equipped to adjust to Keller as they had against Steven Brault earlier in the series or as they did against the Brewers' bullpen this past Wednesday. In two games on this road trip the Cardinals got two hits, and that it.
Their offense has been like a used bike.
It crunches, it grates, and really picks up speed going downhill, but sometimes the chain comes off the pedals just flail. It goes nowhere.
