NEW YORK — Whether it’s sending a team to the pennant as a 25-year-old closer or, at 40, carrying a club back into a race that ran for so long without them, Adam Wainwright bending curves in Queens never gets old.
The younger half of pitching matchup for the aged, Wainwright spun six scoreless innings and left a three-run game for the bullpen to pilot through soggy weather. The Cardinals got offense from a range of ages – from the oldest member of the lineup Yadier Molina’s two runs to the youngest member Dylan Carlson’s RBI – to trounce the Mets, 7-0, at Citi Field on Monday night. Paul Goldschmidt, three days past his 34th birthday, had two RBIs, scored twice, and slugged the homer for the three-run lead the Cardinals spent most of the game protecting.
Instead of building on their emotional, thunderous win against the Yankees late Sunday night, the Mets got to play another part in the Continuing Legend of Adam Wainwright.
He won his 16th game.
He hasn’t lost since turning 40.
Of course, he didn’t lose in the final two weeks of being 39 either.
Opposite fellow fortysomething Rich Hill, Wainwright (16-7) threw the Cardinals to brink of the second wild-card berth, as close to a spot in October as they’ve been in weeks, since at least way back when he was 39. The Cardinals (73-69) gained a ½ game on the idle Reds. If San Diego lost in San Francisco late Monday night, the Cardinals would leapfrog them and have only Cincinnati between them and the National League’s second wild-card berth.
The Cardinals scored four runs in the ninth inning to prolong the game and waterlog the score in a way that hid the work done by Alex Reyes in the eighth.
The final three innings Monday night were played in a downpour and that’s where the game found the Cardinals former closer – in the eighth, almost underwater.
There were lightning strikes around Citi Field and meetings with grounds crew and umpires on it, but on they played. Once a pitch sailed from Reyes fingers and toward the head of Pete Alonso. On they played. The mound started to look weathered and sloppy. On they played.
While it doesn’t count as his 30th save of the season, Reyes got one of his biggest innings of the season by rescuing himself.
Called into the three-game game in the eighth, Reyes walked the first batter he faced and allowed a single to the second. Francisco Lindor, fresh off his three-homer game Sunday against the Yankees, stood at third with Michael Conforto at first and the tying run at plate in two-time home run derby champ Alonso. An inning that pit Reyes against the best hitters in the Mets’ order now set him against the middle of the order with two runners on base.
As the rain persisted, he tightened his grip on the game.
Reyes slipped a 86-mph slider past Alonso to strike out the slugger. Against Javy Baez, that familiar face from the north side now calling Flushing home, Reyes had the count 2-2 before going again to the slider. He put an 88-mph one low so it kissed the dirt and avoided Baez’s bat for the second strikeout. Two strikeouts two outs and the way out of the mess emerged.
Reyes got ahead 1-2 on Jeff McNeil and then dropped a changeup at 91 mph on the Mets’ lefthanded-hitting outfielder for the inning-ending strikeout.
For the first time in six years, two pitchers older than 40 faced each other – and as the game has gotten younger and younger and pitchers are throwing harder and harder perhaps it’s a surprise it had not been longer and longer since a matchup of fortysomethings.
“AARP day,” Hill said to New York reporters.
The early bird had a chance to be special for the Mets as Wainwright searched for his command in the first inning. The Cardinals’ righthander walked two batters in the first inning, and before he could get a third out the Mets had the bases loaded. Eleven of Wainwright’s first 19 pitches were balls as he reached for control. It came when he needed it most. With the bases loaded, Wainwright faced the Mets’ No. 6 batter, Jeff McNeil. Wainwright got ahead with a curveball. McNeil fouled off a changeup to slip to 0-2.
Back the curveball, Wainwright got a strikeout to end the inning.
The Mets wouldn’t get two on base at the same time again until the fifth.
Wainwright, the junior starter on the evening, bopped around the trouble the Mets tried to cause while Hill, the senior starter from Queens, could not do the same for the Mets. Wainwright, age 40 and 14 days, slipped around an infield single in the fourth and a single in the third. In the fifth, a pinch-hit double and Wainwright’s third and final walk brought the tying run to the plate with the middle of the Mets’ order. Conforto stung a pitch – right into Goldschmidt’s glove at first to end the inning and Wainwright’s night.
Wainwright lowered his ERA to 2.88, heightened his place in the conversation for the Cy Young Award voting, and put himself on the brink of a notable round number. The four strikeouts Monday give him 1,997 for his career, and it’s possible he’ll reach 2,000 with the Cardinals in front of his teammates from the 2011 championship club as they gather this weekend in St. Louis for a reunion.
Over Hill, the Cardinals turned leadoff hits into runs.
Yadier Molina’s 399th career double opened the second inning, and he promptly scored the game’s first run on Carlson’s RBI. Tommy Edman laced a double into the left-field corner to start the third inning, and that became the Cardinals’ second run on Goldschmidt’s followup single. In the fifth, Goldschmidt greeted Hill with a leadoff homer to set the Cardinals’ lead at 3-0. The home run was Goldschmidt’s 25th of the season.
Hill, at age 41 and 186 days, got through five innings for the fifth consecutive start. He struck out four and held the Cardinals to six hits. But five of those hits ultimately got a runner into scoring position and three of them scored.
