The Latest Breaking News from HaSeong Kim

There's no secret sauce to the type of defense Padres shortstop Ha-Seong Kim has played while plugging the $340 million gap created by wrist-rehabbing star Fernando Tatis Jr.

ST. LOUIS — Dakota Hudson had been waiting for the day he would still be pitching in the seventh inning for the Cardinals. He hadn’t made it past the fifth in his previous four starts.

ST. LOUIS — As Cardinals linchpins Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina march inexorably toward the all-time record for starts made by one major league battery, Paul Goldschmidt marches to. . . . well, we don’t exactly know yet.

In manager Oliver Marmol’s perfect world, left-hander Packy Naughton and Andre Pallante, the relievers who were the first two hurlers for the Cardinals in Monday afternoon’s “bullpen game,” would have pitched the first six innings. The final three would belong to late-inning stalwarts Giovanny Gallegos, Genesis Cabrera and Ryan Helsley.