PHOENIX — A game Carlos Martinez held by the seams for six scintillating innings came loose from the Cardinals’ grip spectacularly late.
It took extra innings and Yadier Molina to keep from misplacing it entirely.
The Arizona Diamondbacks, careening into the series on a 10-game losing streak, were no-hit, no-luck, no-threat through six innings Thursday and then, no kidding, scored four runs against the Cardinals’ bullpen to tie the game and plunge it into extra innings at Chase Field. What started as Martinez’s longest stretch of no-hit innings to begin a start reversed and became a stress test on the bullpen and a reminder of missed opportunities in the game.
Unable to fully exploit bases-loaded chances early, the Cardinals capitalized on a runner given them, by rule, to start the 10th inning. Molina threaded a double down the third-base line to score Paul Goldschmidt and send the Cardinals to a 5-4 victory. Daniel Ponce de Leon secured his first save of the season to assure closer Alex Reyes (3-1) the win for his scoreless ninth.
Ponce de Leon retired all three batters he faced, getting a groundout for the final out with the tying run stuck in scoring position.
Appearing the day after having his hat confiscated by an umpire for the discoloration on the brim and the possibility of it being a foreign substance, Giovanny Gallegos entered Thursday with a 4-3 lead to hold. As Ketel Marte did to upend Martinez’s start, the Diamondbacks’ center fielder started the eighth with an infield single. Gallegos returned the next two batters he faced — Arizona’s Nos. 3 and 4 hitters — before allowing a game-tying double to Pavin Smith. Gallegos left a pitch up in the zone, maybe even a bit out of the zone’s top shelf, and Smith lofted it to left-center field to score Marte from first and knot the game, 4-4.
In the top of the ninth, Goldschmidt, the former Diamondback, sent a pitch deep to right field that was caught at the wall to keep the Cardinals scoreless.
When Martinez’s no-hit bid came apart in the seventh his start came to an end and so nearly did the Cardinals’ lead.
The Diamondbacks went from 19 consecutive plate appearances without a hit against Martinez to six consecutive runners reached base. Marte started the inning with a line-drive single to left. That was followed by a single to right, and then David Peralta, the former Cardinals farmhand pitcher who could be an outfielder on the move this summer, drilled a line drive to the left-center gap. With a little help from a 10th fielder, the Cardinals avoided a two-run double by Peralta.
The ball hopped to the top of the wall where a fan reached into play to interfere with the ball and end the play. The umpires reviewed where the baserunners were at that moment and awarded Peralta a ground-rule double — and only one run to the Diamondbacks.
The fan assist was fleeting for the Cardinals.
Martinez was out of the game without collecting an out in the seventh, and Genesis Cabrera was into the game to allow all three batters he faced to reach base.
Arizona first baseman Smith regained what the fan took away with a two-run single. Smith reached third as the potential tying run whe Gallegos walked Nick Ahmed to load the bases and then have someone else deal with it.
That someone — Ryan Helsley.
The Cardinals righthander, who manager Mike Shildt has used to groom as a tie-game and close-game reliever so that he can use others to hold leads, entered with the bases loaded, no one out, and Smith there tapping his cleats a third base as the tying run. The word for escaping a bases-loaded, no-out bind is “Houdini.” Helsley conjured his second of the season. He struck out the first two batters he faced — both pinch hitters, one former Cardinal prospect Carson Kelly — and then got a routine groundout to keep the Cardinals’ lead at one run.
The seventh was a hairpin turn from the first six innings of the game — innings Martinez dominated with a mix of pitches he’s only teased having in previous outings. His changeup plunged. His slider evaded. His fastball hopped enough to set them both up. In the first inning, Martinez caught Marte looking at an 84-mph slider. Peralta started the second inning by staring at an 85-mph changeup that bit down hard into the strike zone. A cutter got Smith swinging past it, and after striking out the side in order in the third inning, Martinez was perfect through three innings. He had struck out six of the first nine Diamondbacks he faced.
The 4-0 lead he had by the end of the fifth inning seemed to be the subplot to the game. By the time extra innings arrived it was the two times the Cardinals left the bases loaded that stood out. In the second and fifth innings the rallies fell short of their potential as the Cardinals left three runners stranded at the end of each one.
The Cardinals staked Martinez to a lead with Tyler O’Neill’s first swing since breaking a finger 11 days earlier in San Diego.
Activated from the injured list Thursday because he had regained his grip strength and could play with the damaged finger, O’Neill started in left and batted sixth in the first game of the four-day visit to the desert. He took a ball, and then launched a 92-mph elevated fastball to one of the deepest spots of Chase Field for a two-run homer and the start of a three-run rally for the Cardinals. O’Neill’s ninth homer of the season landed in a balcony-like section near Arizona’s massive scoreboard, about two stories above a marker on the outfield fence saying that point was 413 feet away from home plate.
The initial estimate of O’Neill’s homer was 416 feet.
Seemed short for such a long drive.
The metrics behind Statcast recalculated the distance and edited the original estimate — upping O’Neill’s homer to 451 feet.
Martinez singled and scored on a bases-loaded walk later in the inning to elevate the lead to 3-0. In the fifth inning, back to back doubles by former Arizona fixture Goldschmidt and longtime Arizona visitor Nolan Arenado produced the Cardinals’ fourth run. That three-hit, one-run add-on inning chased Arizona starter Jon Duplantier from his first big-league appearance since 2019. He allowed the four runs on seven hits and two walks through 4 2/3 innings.
