ST. LOUIS -- What Jack Flaherty started and Paul Goldschmidt supported it took near perfection to finish against the feisty, first-place, unfazed Milwaukee Brewers.
Mistakes were made.
Mistakes compounded.
The Cardinals saw a one-run lead vanish along with a home run over the left-field wall in the ninth inning and then their game came completely apart in the 10th. The Brewers’ go-ahead run scored on a wild pitch and they would run away with a 6-4 victory Wednesday night at Busch Stadium.
That runner was at third because of Alex Reyes’ throwing error to start the inning. Two more runs followed, eased along by a savvy bunt from Christian Yelich and a ball that pinballed away in right field. The Brewers, whose bullpen did not allow the Cardinals to score a run after the second inning, scored three runs in extra innings, and all of them were unearned and with two outs. What had been a taut, compelling game melted into a mush for the Cardinals and offered further affirmation to the Brewers’ hold on the standings. A close game for nine innings showed by the 10th how the teams weren’t close at all.
The Cardinals, once emboldened by their 13 games remaining against the first-place club, now face different reality. Their deficit in the division is now larger than the games they have remaining against Milwaukee.
There are 11 remaining to play.
They trail by 12.
The extra-inning runner started at second got to third when Reyes threw wide to first. Reyes recovered to get two outs spiked a 0-1 pitch that allowed that runner, Jackie Bradley Jr., to score. Yelich dropped a bunt to bring home the inning’s second run, and then he scored from first on a line drive to right that ricocheted off the fielder. That gave St. Louis native Devin Williams cushion as he allowed one run and had the tying run at the plate with no outs before cinching the win.
All three of the Cardinals’ runs came in the first two innings, each of the rallies involving a double from Goldschmidt. His RBI double in the second was the Cardinals’ last hit for several innings and their last extra-base hit before the tie game as the Brewers’ bullpen took over and overwhelmed after the third inning. An offense that didn’t add to its lead, left the Cardinals’ bullpen to get nine outs without allowing a run.
They got seven.
Avisail Garcia skied a pitch from closer Reyes that got over the left field wall to tie the game in the ninth, 3-3. Garcia’s second homer of the game came immediately after a teammate and his manager had been ejected from the game. The game-tying launch traveled an estimated 357 feet. Tyler O’Neill jumped to get his glove over the wall about an estimated 354 feet away from home.
That erased what would have been Flaherty’s 10th win of the season and a token for his six strong innings. The only two runs he allowed came on solo homers.
His outing proved a tidy opening considering the ejections that littered the later innings and began to shape the game as well. Both sides aired their unprintable Yelp! reviews of the umpires.
The game took two significant turns in between the seventh and eighth inning. Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado, irate over two calls by first base umpire Alan Porter, continued his criticism of the umpire as he took the field for the eighth. He held up two fingers to the ump for the two at-bats those calls cost him.
When he was ejected, he beelined to meet the ump near first.
Arenado’s fifth career ejection brought Edmundo Sosa into the game to play third and bat third in a one-run game. That also meant Sosa, not Arenado, came up in the ninth of the tie game with a runner on base.
What pushed Arenado to that point was his two check-swing strikeouts, both of them given on appeal by Porter. In the first inning, Arenado thought he held up on an 0-2 pitch only to have Porter call him out. Arenado expressed his opinion of Porter’s call with a series of colorful adjectives. Manager Mike Shildt echoed his third baseman’s assessment. In the seventh, with the Cardinals holding to that 3-2 lead, Arenado took even less of a check swing on a 3-2 pitch, and was about ready to take his walk. On appeal, Porter said he swung and struck out. As Arenado marched back to the dugout he held up two fingers to Porter as if to say, “That’s twice.”
It was the same gesture that came moments before his ejection.
Porter will be behind the plate Thursday when Arenado is at it.
At the exact time, the managers were making machinations. The Brewers went to a pinch-hitter to face lefty Genesis Cabrera, and so that brought Giovanny Gallegos in to face the righthanded batter and handle the eighth. That matchup worked for the first batter and then it came around to Kolten Wong. The former Cardinals’ infielder laced a single to center and stole second to get the tying run into scoring position for Willy Adames.
With a solo homer already in his pocket, the human booster rocket who sent the Brewers hurtling into first place after his arrival from Tampa Bay, Adames worked a walk from Gallegos as the eighth inning inched to a crawl.
With one out, Milwaukee had former MVP Christian Yelich at the plate and newly added cleanup hitter Eduardo Escobar on deck to upend the game.
Gallegos got a popup to Sosa from Yelich.
Gallegos, his delivery slow but his fastball picking up pace, got ahead in the count with two 95-mph pitches to Escobar. He missed with two more before Escobar watched a full-count fastball to end the inning – and the threat.
All three of the Cardinals runs came against Brewers starter Freddy Peralta. The righthanded entered the game averaging around four hits every nine innings. The Cardinals had three by the end of the first and a 2-0 lead thanks to an RBI from Tyler O’Neill and a lined RBI single from rookie Lars Nootbaar. Peralta got through the second inning and hit for himself before leaving the game suddenly with right shoulder discomfort. The cause of the injury was not immediately known during the game.
Peralta’s departure left Brewers manager Craig Counsell doing what he has done as well as any manager over recent seasons – scrambling for pitching. He had potentially seven innings to cover and one of the game’s best bullpens to do it. While he mixed and matched, the Cardinals watched Flaherty cruise.
In his first start at home in three months, Flaherty picked up where he left off.
When last he delivered a pitch with competitive intent at Busch Stadium, Flaherty was about to be 8-0, his ERA shrank to 2.53, his oblique muscle was intact, and he was full-speed ahead toward what seemed like an inevitable All-Star appearance. He had allowed 13 hits in those early home games and struck out 25. Flaherty’s final two starts came on the road before the torn oblique that sidelined him for more than 70 days, so Wednesday’s outing was his first against an opponent from that mound since May 19.
It pitched as if he didn’t want to stay long.
Flaherty retired the first 10 batters he faced, and the first ball that got beyond the reach of an infielder came as the leadoff out of the fourth inning. Four of the first nine Brewers to face Flaherty struck out. The other five skipped into groundouts. Flaherty was perfect until Willy Adames’ home run with one out in the fourth inning, and the Cardinals righthander ran his scoreless streak to 9 1/3 since returning from injury until Adames’ homer.
In the fourth inning, Flaherty dialed back some velocity, showed a greater depth to the break on his curveball, and the Brewers obliged with some well-struck pitches.
Adames’ homer cleared the fence in right field. Two batters later Eduardo Escobar, a trade deadline addition by the Brewers, flipped a single to left. The next batter, Omar Narvaez, stung a pitch to left field that happened to be right toward Nootbaar for a third out.
Garcia opened the fifth inning with a leadoff homer against Flaherty. Garcia lofted a curveball that caught too much of the plate and not enough of gravity over the left-field fence to carve the Cardinals’ lead down to a run. An error of his own allowed the tying run to reach base, and then Flaherty revved up his fastball again. After two innings of downshifting, he lasered a 95-mph fastball past Jackie Bradley Jr. The Brewers’ center fielder had time enough to watch it for a called third strike.
Flaherty overpowered a pinch-hitter and then handled the groundout from Wong all on his own. The Cardinals’ former leadoff hitter chopped a ball toward second base. Flaherty lunged off the mound to snag the grounder – and tag Wong on his own.
