MIAMI — So the Cardinals finally had a starter endure past the fifth inning Wednesday night. Staff ace Jack Flaherty gave up a leadoff hit to Miami’s Corey Dickerson but no other safeties in six innings covering 101 pitches.
Miami’s Pablo Lopez allowed only two hits — and also no runs — through 6 2/3 innings as the teams played a getaway game as if double-parked. With two outs in the seventh, though, Lopez walked hitless Matt Carpenter and Yadier Molina ripped a Lopez cutter over the left-field wall for his first homer of the season in the Cardinals’ 101st career game against the Marlins in Miami.
Possessors of the best record of any road team here, the Cardinals now have won 65 of those 101 games, including a series-sweeping 7-0 victory Wednesday night, credited to Flaherty, before a bipartisan gathering of 5,244. The Marlins had only three hits for the game.
Cardinals center fielder Dylan Carlson has had only three hits for the season. But they all have been home runs, featuring a grand slam in the ninth that wrapped up business as usual for the Cardinals in Miami.
The sweep was the 10th the Cardinals had achieved against the Marlins since 1994. The first had come in 1994 as current Cardinals bullpen coach Bryan Eversgerd, a reliever, made the only start of his career in game one of the series when the scheduled starter, the late Rheal Cormier, hurt his back warming up, and Eversgerd pitched five innings for the win.
Five innings was the most innings any of the first five Cardinals starters, Flaherty among them, had worked in the first five games this season.
Once Flaherty caught Dickerson leaning too far off second to record the first out of what could have been a calamitous first inning for him, Flaherty was able to make a course correction Wednesday. He finished with six strikeouts before the bullpen took over in the forms of Genesis Cabrera and Jordan Hicks. Cabrera handled the seventh and eighth and Hicks, whose sinker got to 103 mph, wasn't bothered by a walk and a hit in the ninth as right fielder Justin Williams preserved the shutout with a diving catch to end the game.
The Cardinals placed only one man in scoring position through seven innings. Carpenter struck out with Nolan Arenado at third and two outs in the fourth.
Arenado singled, hitting safely for his sixth successive game as a Cardinal, and moved up on a groundout by Paul DeJong and a passed ball by catcher Jorge Alfaro, who boxed several balls in this series.
On the other hand, the Cardinals’ defense again excelled. Center fielder Carlson ran down Brian Anderson’s extra-base bid to right center in the Miami fourth. And then Carlson tracked down Anderson’s drive to deep center before banging into the wall into the seventh, with Cabrera pitching.
Tommy Edman, who has both Cardinals steals this year, swiped second with two outs after he had singled in the eighth. And Paul Goldschmidt delivered another blow to the Marlins with a run-scoring single to left. Carlson applied the knockout punch with his second ninth-inning homer in two nights. The switch-hitting rookie has nine RBIs with just three hits.
After their staff was torched for 27 runs in three games in Cincinnati, with the Cardinals winning one, the Cardinals allowed just three runs in three games to the Marlins.
