ATLANTA — Even through the lowest stretch of their recent losing, the Cardinals had some element of their game trying to tug them out of the mess. They just couldn’t coordinate. If they got strong pitching, the offense meandered. When the offense had life, the pitching was ejected early, or the defense stumbled.
Members of the team mused about what could happen if they got the various facets of their team moving in the same direction.
They did Friday.
This is not what they had in mind.
In loss as troubling individually as this parade of them has been collectively, the Cardinals couldn’t count on their pitching or hitting and crumbled, 9-1, to Atlanta at Truist Park. A sellout crowd of 40,377 — the largest to see the Cardinals play a game this season — saw one of their worst games of the season.
An early 1-0 lead evaporated when the Braves hit two homers in the seventh inning and scored eight runs against starter Carlos Martinez. Leadoff hitter Tommy Edman doubled and scored to start the game, and then the offense went familiarly flat. Braves lefty Max Fried did not allow another Cardinal to reach base, and he finished his seven strong innings by retiring the final seven he faced.
The cacophony of ongoing losses and talk of “shaking things up” has yet to collide with any dramatic move. But the clock is ticking.
The Cardinals have lost 13 of their previous 18 games.
Whatever momentum Martinez (3-8) had coming out of his strong start Sunday at Wrigley Field faded swiftly as he sunk back into the quicksand of walks, hit batters, and runaway innings.
By the end of the second inning, Braves leadoff hitter Ronald Acuna Jr., one of the dazzling young talents in the game, had attempted to steal second twice off Yadier Molina — because he’d been on base twice to do so. Neither time did he have to put a ball in play to get there. Martinez hit Acuna to leadoff the bottom of the first, and he walked Acuna with two outs in the second inning to restart that inning for the Braves.
That walk is when Martinez’s start came apart.
Molina threw Acuna out in the first inning, and that limited the trouble that followed when Ozzie Albies doubled and tied the game, 1-1, on Austin Riley’s two-out single. The first pitch of the second inning was hit for a tiebreaking homer by William Contreras. But a couple outs, including a strikeout, had given Martinez back control of the inning. The right-hander had his escape, had the route, and decided to increase the difficulty. By walking Acuna with two outs, that brought the inning around to reigning MVP Freddie Freeman and the middle of the Braves’ order. A rout blossomed.
Freeman singled.
Albies homered.
The Braves scored four runs in the second inning — more than the Cardinals had scored total in their previous three games and more than the Cardinals have scored in 37 of their 70 games.
And Atlanta didn’t stop there.
Another rally began with another gift to Acuna.
Martinez lost control of a pitch, threw it behind Acuna, and brushed him with it to again give the leadoff hitter first. He didn’t try to steal on Molina because he didn’t have a chance before rounding to third on Freeman’s followup single. A bloop single to Albies gave him his third RBI of the game before the end of the fourth — and that meant Albies had produced nearly as many runs in two swings than the Cardinals had their previous 31 innings. That chased Martinez from his start but did not halt the Braves.
Asked again to pull the Cardinals out of trouble with runners on base, Jake Woodford trotted in from the bullpen and walked into complications.
A single and a sacrifice fly allowed the two runners he inherited to score and add that gloss to Martinez’s line. The last run of the inning made some unwanted history.
After getting a popup from No. 8 hitter Guillermo Heredia with the bases loaded, Woodford faced Fried. He walked the pitcher to force home Atlanta’s ninth run.
That was the 17th time this season that the Cardinals have walked a batter with the bases loaded. That ties the franchise record since such a statistic could be kept, going back several generations. It is also by far the most in the majors this season. Toronto has given away bases-loaded runs like that 10 times.
A bases-loaded walk producing the Braves’ ninth run of the debacle is a fitting illustration of the Cardinals’ ongoing struggles.
Such a record is the least of their concerns.
