PHOENIX — The St. Louis Cardinals have come up with an approach against Arizona that is ultimately, completely successful, even if it sometimes feels like they’ve got a snake by the rattler and must scrabble to avoid its bite.
With a strong enough start, it doesn’t matter how they finish.
For the third consecutive game, the Cardinals stormed to an early lead, hoisted there again by a home run from left fielder Tyler O’Neill. The Cardinals had seven runs before Arizona had its first and yet the Diamondbacks got the tying run to the plate in the ninth inning. Alex Reyes kept it there to complete a 7-4 victory Saturday night at Chase Field. Reyes’ save made a winner of Adam Wainwright, who extended a personal no-hit streak to the equivalent of 11 innings, but didn’t get an out in the sixth despite pitching with a hearty 7-0 lead at one point.
O’Neill finished with two doubles and his third homer in as many games, while catcher Yadier Molina had three RBIs by the end of the third inning.
In the first three games against Arizona, the Cardinals have outscored the D-Backs, 18-3, through the first three innings. But each game has become a save situation by its ending. Arizona lost its 13th consecutive game when it could not score against the Cardinals’ final three relievers.
The Cardinals can sweep the four-game series with a win Sunday and claim their fourth consecutive series sweep against a team with a losing record.
A chance to add some late-game grease to the bullpen’s grind came in the eighth inning and went when Lane Thomas tried to steal third base. In a situation when the only reason to go is because it’s a surefire steal, Thomas was thrown out – and thus no longer on base when Tommy Edman doubled. An inning that could have, at least, eked across a spare run instead lit up with a zero as the game arrived at lefty Tyler Webb.
Webb toted a 11.57 ERA into the eighth inning and so far this month he’s allowed at least a run in six of his eight appearances. In one that he didn’t, all three inherited runners scored.
The first batter Webb faced bounced a single up the middle.
He spent the rest of the inning at first base.
Webb retired three batters, including pinch-hitters Carson Kelly and Josh Reddick, to keep the lead in the same place he found it and carry the eight through to closer Reyes. Unavailable to close the win Friday game, Reyes was back for his second appearance in three days against the D-Backs and allowed two runners to reach before securing his 15th save.
In his start last weekend against the Cubs, Wainwright allowed a hit in the first inning – and not another one as he pitched through the eighth. He didn’t wait to get the stinginess going Saturday. The veteran starter retired the first eight Diamondbacks he faced and allowed one ball out of the infield as he did so. He was helped by a diving play at first base from Paul Goldschmidt and perhaps how long it had been since the Diamondbacks saw his curveball.
They took it for strikes.
They swung and missed at it for strikes.
They rarely put it in play.
By the time he ended the third inning with a strikeout on his curveball, Wainwright had faced 10 batters and taken a no-hitter into the fourth. He would get one more out before Eduardo Escobar’s double scarred the pitching line. More welts were to come but between Kris Bryant’s single almost a week ago and Escobar’s double, Wainwright had gone 33 outs – the equivalent of 11 innings – without allowing a hit.
It’s the longest streak without allowing hit by a Cardinals’ pitcher since Bud Smith fashioned a no-hitter and then, 14 days later, added two innings on to it in Sept. 2001 to get to 11, according to Elias Sports.
An inning after allowing that first hit in almost a week, Wainwright had most of the 7-0 lead at his back start to slip away, too. Arizona catcher Stephen Vogt chomped into with a two-run homer well over the shift in the fifth inning, and in the sixth, the first three batters of the innings reached base to chase Wainwright from his start. The 93rd and last pitch Wainwright made got a desired groundball that skittered, skipped, and hopped between two fielders to bring home two runs and cleave the Cardinals’ lead to 7-4.
The tying run would reach base in that inning before lefty Genesis Cabrera could negotiate his way out of it.
A walk, per standard M.O. of the bullpen, was involved.
Wainwright’s 10th start of the season and 336th of his career was also his 283rd with Molina at catcher. The two birds in a battery moved into a tie for the fourth-most starts together as pitcher and catcher in Major League Baseball history. With their next start together, likely later this week at Busch Stadium, they surpass Dodgers’ battery Don Drysdale and John Roseboro, moving closer to the 306 starts Red Faber and Ray Schalk of the White Sox.
While Wainwright was busy holding the Diamondbacks hitless through the first three innings, Molina helped the offense chock the scoreboard with early runs.
He salvaged the first inning with a two-out RBI single, and when the lineup came back around to him in the third inning he drove home two with a single to left. Molina’s three RBIs gave him 26 for the season and the lead for all NL catchers. It also helped the Cardinals widen their lead on Arizona for the third consecutive game. When O’Neill followed Molina’s run-scoring single in the third with his two-run double, the Cardinals had thundered for a five-run inning and presented a 6-0 lead for Wainwright.
They had scored seven for starter Johan Oviedo on Friday.
They had a 5-0 lead after five on Thursday.
Through the first three games of the four-game visit to Phoenix, the Cardinals had outscored their hosts 16-3 in the first four innings. And yet such solid early leads were gnawed away by the end. It took extra innings to dispatch the D-Backs on Thursday, and the Cardinals called on Daniel Ponce de Leon to close a two-run game Friday for his second save in as many appearances in this series. The early runaways that slowed and stumbled into close games had as much to do with the offense stymied by Arizona’s relievers as it did the Cardinals’ bullpen letting runs leak.
