ST. LOUIS — Neither the rain nor the runs carried into the evening for the Cardinals.
A few hours after Game 1 water-logged with runs and interrupted by thunderstorms, the Cardinals could not muster much more than a drop of offense and lost, 6-2, to the New York Yankees in the second game of a sold-out doubleheader at Busch Stadium.
The Cardinals won the first game, 11-4.
The same day the Cardinals tagged two-time All-Star Luis Severino with nine runs on the way to that Game 1 win, they could not muster any more than two Lars Nootbaar runs against the Yankees’ casting-call of available pitchers.
The Yankees chose to go with a bullpen game Saturday night in Game 2, bumping ace Gerrit Cole back to the series finale Sunday. They used six different pitchers to navigate the nine innings. Only Michael King threw more than two innings. His 3 1/3 scoreless innings through the heart game is what got the game to the back side of the Yankees’ bullpen, where Clay Holmes lurked to close out the ninth.
The Yankees manufactured runs to take the lead and then bunted home a run in the ninth to widen their lead. Two of the Yankees’ first three runs scored on sacrifice flies.
In the ninth, catcher Jose Trevino dropped a bunt toward first base that allowed Isiah Kiner-Falefa to beat the throw home and double the Yankees’ lead to two runs.
A two-run single followed to increase the lead and decrease the Cardinals’ chances of a ninth-inning uprising.
Nootbaar was the Cardinals’ answer to each Yankees’ rally early in the game. Nootbaar hit his third career leadoff homer — his second of the season — to tie the game, 1-1, in the first inning on the first swing by a Cardinal. In the third inning, Nootbaar singled to lead off the inning and then scored on Jordan Walker’s double that left his bat at 111 mph. An hour or so after his 17-game hitting streak ended in Game 1, Walker started a new streak with hits in his first two at-bats.
Welcome back, Dakota
Demoted during spring training, Dakota Hudson’s first appearance in the majors was quite an assignment.
The right-hander, who had a 6.00 ERA in 11 starts this season at Class AAA Memphis, entered in the fifth inning of Game 2 with two runners on and former National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton looming toward the batter’s box. Stanton, the 60-homer slugger the Cardinals once tried to trade for, had a chance to break the game open. The Yankees held a one-run lead at the time, but with two on and one out, all that stood between him and a big inning was a pitcher the Cardinals had not called upon all season, not once.
Hudson delivered.
The right-hander who struggles with walks got ahead 0-2 on Stanton before getting a lineout to center field. Hudson followed that by striking out former Cub Anthony Rizzo to freeze the inning and the score where he found it. Neither of the inherited runners scored, and the Cardinals remained a swing away from a tie. Hudson did not stop there.
Added as the 27th man to the roster for the doubleheader, Hudson pitched 2 2/3 scoreless innings. He did not walk a batter. He struck out two. And somewhere in there came a hit that amounted to not much at all.
Liberatore finds his footing, not his length
Eight batters into the game, the Yankees had riddled rookie Matthew Liberatore for five hits and the baserunners that would quickly become three runs.
That eighth hitter, shortstop Anthony Volpe, launched a triple to right field and scored to give the Yankees a 3-1 lead. He came home on a sacrifice fly — but rather than signal the success of the Yankees’ offense, that turn of events in the second inning hinted at groove for Liberatore.
He had found one.
Liberatore needed five pitches to retire the middle of the Yankees’ order in the third inning — speeding through Stanton, Rizzo, and former Cardinal Harrison Bader. The lefty’s second time through the Yankees order incldued only two hits, one of them erased on a double play. It was the late efficiency needed to get through 4 1/3 innings, but not the complete efficiency the Cardinals need from the rotation to get deeper into games.
With help from Hudson, Liberatore finished his start with three runs allowed on seven hits and one strike out. On 56 pitches, he got 13 outs.
