ST. LOUIS — The Cardinals’ Paul DeJong, who had fanned in two of his first three plate appearances Friday night, was allowed to stay in to face hard-throwing New York Yankees reliever Clay Holmes with two on and two out in the eighth inning of a game the Cardinals trailed by one run.
Holmes had held right-handed batters to a .159 average this season and left-handed-batting Brendan Donovan was available. But manager Oliver Marmol stayed with DeJong, who lined a double into the right-field corner to score Nolan Arenado and Tyler O’Neill to provide the margin in a 4-3 victory in which the Cardinals had just five hits.
Arenado had beaten out an infield hit and O’Neill had walked ahead of DeJong’s game-deciding hit.
The Yankees hardly resembled the team which, at 185 homers, had 23 more than the second-place team, before Friday. They had two doubles among their 10 hits, which included two bloop singles by home-run-leader Aaron Judge and another dribbler by Isiah Kiner-Falefa that traveled about 100 feet. But what the Yankees also did was steal second unmolested in the form of Judge, and got a productive groundout by Matt Carpenter, who had also had two singles to key scoring innings.
Neither team, in fact, had a home run with the Yankees’ streak being stopped at 19 games and the Cardinals’ at 13. Those two streaks represented the longest active streaks in the majors.
Of note for the Cardinals were three pitching performances. Dakota Hudson, though he allowed some soft hits, lasted only four innings and 78 pitches, being charged with three runs. His relief, Andre Pallante, threw four scoreless innings to gain the win, preserved y Ryan Helsley.
Helsley recorded his 10th save. With a runner on, he induced Judge to pop up and Carpenter to hit a checked-grounder to over-shifted shortstop DeJong, who flipped the ball with his glove to first, just ahead of Carpenter's arrival.
