MILWAUKEE – The story was there, the unscripted return of Alex Reyes to the ninth inning to do more than save a game but save a series and steady a moment.
It was there – and gone, like the walk-off grand slam that ended it.
Daniel Vogelbach crushed a one-out grand slam in the ninth inning to vaporize the Cardinals’ lead and send Milwaukee to a 6-5 victory. The Cardinals had a 5-1 lead entering the ninth inning, but Giovanny Gallegos and Reyes could not hold it. Four runners reached against Gallegos before the Cardinals made the call to turn to Reyes with the bases loaded and the potential winning run at the plate.
Vogelbach, a pinch-hitter, took the potential out of it.
His swing on the second pitch he saw from Reyes, the second pitch Reyes threw in his appearance, carried over the right field wall and may carry well beyond the game. The Cardinals had a chance to win a second consecutive series against the team ahead of them in the standings. Instead, they slip to a 5-5 road trip that helped them creep into the wild-card conversation but not yet climb into the leaders for the wild-card race.
The Cardinals’ bullpen walked three batters in the eighth and ninth innings and allowed a total of five hits while trying to close out a four-run game.
Of all the pitches Jon Lester threw and the successful swings Tyler O’Neill lashed, the game, the very series, almost came Sunday to Paul Goldschmidt’s wingspan.
The Cardinals first baseman, likely on his way to another Gold Glove this season, snared a line drive by leaping and reaching to his left. The sizzler, stung by Milwaukee pinch-hitter and former MVP Christian Yelich, was bound for the right-field corner in the eighth inning and would have cleared the bases. Yelich, the potential tying run, would have reached second base, maybe even third.
Instead, he took a stride from the batter’s box and stared.
And stared.
And turned back to the dugout, the Brewers’ best chance to rally seemingly over, lost in the glove of Paul Goldschmidt.
Vogelbach just put the game out of anyone’s reach.
Against Brewers’ ace Corbin Burnes, the Cardinals built their lead from Harrison Bader’s two-run double that barely passed third base and O’Neill’s two-run homer that cleared the concourse and appeared to hop into the Milwaukee afternoon. Lester carried his game into the sixth before turning it over to the reengineered look of the Cardinals’ late innings. T. J. McFarland, called in to get a groundball and possibly a double play, got a groundball that was definitely turned into a double play. Luis Garcia handled the seven adroitly, and trouble found lefty Genesis Cabrera in the eighth.
A double and two walks, including one to the Brewers’ limited slugger Avisail Garcia, loaded the bases and prompted a double-switch to get Gallegos into the game. It was his solve.
Brewers bopper Rowdy Tellez ran the count full against Gallegos before swinging over a plunging pitch into the dirt for the inning’s second out. The Brewers started Sunday without several of their leading hitters in the lineup: Garcia and Yelich were on the bench; Kolten Wong remained on paternity leave; and Willy Adames went on the injury list Sunday with a leg injury. Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell had a stash of bats to use in late innings and the opportunity in the eighth.
After Tellez struck out, Yelich came up.
He took a ball from Gallegos and then pulled the first strike – a flattened, 86.2-mph slider that was lined toward right field. The crowd barely had a chance to gasp at the runs likely to come in when Goldschmidt smothered the rally with his reach.
It was a defensive play not made on the other side of the field that helped the Cardinals first crack Burnes. In the third inning, back-to-back singles, including the first of three hits for O’Neill, put a rally in motion. Molina walked to load the bases and set up Edmundo Sosa’s sacrifice fly to tie the game, 1-1. Bader followed with a groundball that hugged the third-base line. Brewers infielder Luis Urias made a backhand stab at the ball and nicked it while he was in fair territory. That nudged the ball foul – but it was rightly called fair. The play could not be reviewed because, by rule, boundary calls in front of an umpire cannot be challenged.
The grounder got just past third base, but the Brewers could not recover before O’Neill and Molina scored to widen the Cardinals lead to 3-1.
Initially ruled an error on Urias, the scoring was changed to a two-run double later.
The derring-do Lester showed in Cincinnati to let the defense do what it does best came with him to another hitter friendly ballpark, the rechristened American Family Field.
Against the Reds, Lester was able to invite groundballs and soft contact and let his outfielders track the ball down at a confined Great American Ball Park that can sometimes turn such an approach into an abbreviated, ugly evening and a bloated ERA. Lester thrived. On Sunday, at the Brewers’ ballpark, Lester got a strikeout in the first inning when Yadier Molina waggled his pinky for a pitch on th inside pitch of the plate and Lester delivered.
He got only one more strikeout the rest of his start.
Mixing sinkers with cutters as he did in Cincinnati, the lefty didn’t have to toggle too much between velocity because he had the movement doing the deception for him. He got three groundouts around a homer in the second inning. Molina’s pickoff in the third inning helped get through the third. And he allowed three different batters to reach abse in the fourth inning, just none of them scored.
An example of Lester’s confidence in his defense came in that fourth inning when he intentionally walked the hitter who homered of him, Pablo Reyes. That choice loaded the bases with a two-run lead – and not for the pitcher, Burnes. Coming to the plate was outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. A lefthanded batter, Bradley was the matchup Lester wanted, and the better chance to get a ball in play that might end the inning.
Lester fell behind 3-1 in the count.
Bradley put the next pitch in play for a groundout that ended the inning, ended the threat, and effectively ended any real chance Milwaukee had to crash Lester’s line.
The pitch that got the groundout – the cutter, again.
In 11 2/3 innings on this road trip, Lester allowed two earned runs and seven hits, six of which came Sunday from the Brewers. He walked only four batters. Coupled with his one-hitter in Cincinnati, Sunday’s start lowered his overall ERA this season beneath 5.00 for the first time since mid-July.
