The big, bold number that puts Jack Flaherty in the company of Bob Gibson for how he’s started a season came only after a game where some little moments had to go right, too.
The opening day starter and All-Star candidate improved to 8-0 to start the season as he threw the Cardinals to a 8-5 victory at Busch Stadium against the Pittsburgh and a second consecutive series sweep of their waterlogged rivals. Flaherty becomes the first Cardinal starter to begin the season 8-0 since Gibson started 1965 8-0. The Hall of Fame righthander also got to 8-0 in his first nine games, and the Cardinals have won all nine of Flaherty’s starts this season.
It helped Wednesday, in front of the largest crowd yet at Busch (14,677), that the Cardinals stormed to a 6-0 lead before the Bucs had a run.
Flaherty retired the side in order in the first inning and never pitched without a lead after that as the Cardinals built a 1-0 lead into a 6-0 lead and then a 8-2 lead before the Pirates began to whittle it away. To protect the lead it took an escape in the seventh orchestrated by reliever Genesis Cabrera and help from two snazzy diving plays by shortstop Edmundo Sosa, who has solidified his grip on innings at the position with Paul DeJong recovering from a fractured rib. Those contributions, overshadowed in the box score by Paul Goldschmidt’s three hits or Flaherty’s eighth win, had to happen to keep a lead from capsizing before closer Alex Reyes got his grip on it.
Reyes converted his 12th save in as many tries to cement the Cardinals’ ninth consecutive victory against the Pirates.
Flaherty had his unsteady moments as he walked three in th second inning, but navigated around trouble with the help of a strikeout by the opposing pitcher. The Cardinals’ righthander would walk four in his six innings and allow a total of eight baserunners, but he counteracted that with seven strikeouts. Sosa snagged a liner in the fifth inning that appeared to quell a rally, and definitely minimized it when Gregory Polanco homered. The two runs against Flaherty came on that one swing.
Flaherty is the first pitcher in the majors to start a season 8-0 since Dallas Keuchel did in 2017.
Gibson’s 8-0 start to the 1965 season was the beginning of his first career 20-win season.
The crescendo of offense in the five-run second allowed the Cardinals’ lineup to stay ahead of the Cardinals’ bullpen, and thus the Pirates.
Once Flaherty handed the game over to the relievers, it took the Cardinals three pitchers to get the three outs of the top of the seventh. Rookie Kodi Whitley did not retire any of the three batters he had to face. Tyler Webb got a groundball from the first of three batters he was required to face before allowing back-to-back RBI singles. That dropped a mess on Cabrera’s shoulders for the second time in as many games. He tidied it up, briskly.
The Pirates turned two singles off Whitley and the two singles off Webb into three runs in the seventh that narrowed the Cardinals’ lead into a save situation.
It didn’t get closer thanks to Cabrera.
Since hitting two Phillies in an uncomfortable inning back on April 28, Cabrera has emerged as the Cardinals’ go-to lefty. Including his scoreless inning of work Wednesday to calm the seventh and start the eighth, Cabrera has struck out 11 in his 11 2/3 innings since hitting the Phillies, and he’s allowed one run on 12 baserunners. What has increased the need for such production is Webb’s persisting struggles with inherited runners and Andrew Miller’s absence due to a foot injury. Miller has recovered and is in the process of improving his mechanics and arm strength for a return – which takes on new urgency if Cabrera is alone from the left.
The Cardinals teased the torrent of offense in the first inning and by the time they let loose with five runs in the second they did so against a Pirates reliever.
Leadoff hitter Tommy Edman and Goldschmidt swapped spots on the bases with doubles in the first inning. Goldschmidt’s drove home Edman for a 1-0 lead. The inning ended when Bucs starter Trevor Cahill found his footing and struck out, consecutively, Arenado and Yadier Molina. Cahill lost his legs after that. The righthanded walked two to start the second and hit Edmundo Sosa with a breaking ball to load the bases. Cahill’s next pitch was a ball to Flaherty – and it was also his last pitch. The Pirates’ trainer rushed from the dugout and escorted Cahill from the game after watching him shake and twist his left leg.
The righthander was diagnosed later with a left calf injury that was still be evaluated by the Pirates’ medical staff late Wednesday.
He left the bullpen a game already strained.
With the bases loaded and no one out, Flaherty brough home a run with a sacrifice fly. Edman followed with a two-run single, and then the rally reached the middle of the order. While the Cardinals’ struggles with runners in scoring position have been acute on the outskirts of the lineup, the middle was not immune on the road trip. Goldschmidt socked an extra-inning home run on the first game of the road trip to send the Cardinals’ hurtling toward a win against Milwaukee. After that swing, he and Arenado combined to go three-for-10 (.300) with runners in scoring position in the next six games.
Only one of those hits produced an RBI.
Both hitters did with runners in scoring position in the second inning.
Goldschmidt roped his second hit in as many innings for an RBI single that scored Edman. Arenado, who did not extend his homer streak to five games, followed with an RBI single to bring around rookie Dylan Carlson. Arenado’s first five plate appearances Wednesday all came with at least one runner in scoring position, and Carlson scored Arenado’s 31st RBI of the season. That puts him on pace to be the Cardinals’ first hitter with at least 100 RBIs since Matt Holliday in 2012. If Arenado does, that would end the longest streak without a 100-RBI batter in a century for the Cardinals.
The Cardinals piled on what turned out to be influential runs in the fifth inning as Edman and Carlson joined the RBI romp. Edman got his third of the game with a sacrifice fly.
By the time the inning found Goldschmidt and Arenado again with runners in scoring position the Cardinals had sent 31 batters up for a plate appearance.
Eighteen of them had at least one runner in scoring position.
