PITTSBURGH _ In a race against a pitch count, Pittsburgh starter Mitch Keller sent a no-hitter into the seventh inning against the Cardinals but did not continue. So as the zeroes he lined up gave way to the walks that would undo them, manager Cards Mike Shildt saw more than a rally.
He called it an allegory.
Two walks and a hit batter that could prove costly by Sunday primed a five-run seventh inning that carried the Cardinals to a 5-4 victory Saturday night at PNC Park. The superb start Keller authored on 84 pitches _ exhausting the supply he had been given coming back from an oblique injury _ took the Cardinals eight batters to waterlog and claim their third consecutive win. They hadn't put a ball out of the infield in 11 batters before Tyler O'Neill's two-run double started the scoring.
