ST. LOUIS — The trouble the Cardinals invited by waiting to generate any sustained offense Wednesday night and helping their opponents along with some misplays was giving the team with the worst record in the majors a chance to build a lead.
They still had enough to overcome it.
Absent for eight innings and momentarily ugly in the eighth inning, the Cardinals stirred in the ninth for five runs to steal a 6-5 walk-off win against the last-place Washington Nationals. Tommy Edman drilled a double that carried over the reach of the Nats’ left fielder and allowed two runs to score and flip a game that seemed destined to be a dud. The Cardinals scored three runs in the ninth inning against Nats right-hander Kyle Finnegan with two outs.
The rally was kept alive by Yadier Molina’s RBI single with two outs that put the tying run at second base and the go-ahead run at first. Rookie Ben DeLuzio replaced Molina at first and sped home on Edman’s double for the Cardinals’ seventh walk-off win of the season.
In another superb start, Cardinals lefty Jordan Montgomery spent all of his 6 2/3 innings preserving a scoreless tie or protecting a one-run lead, right up until his final pitch. Washington hit that 98th pitch for a game-tying triple to chase the lefty from his start. The Nationals then spun three Cardinals’ miscues into four runs to pull away and create a cushion that was not tested until the bottom of the ninth. St. Louis native and former Cardinal Luke Voit’s 424-foot moonshot came in the middle of a four-run rally that pushed the Nats to the lead they lost in the ninth.
When the inning started, the Cardinals had more misplays than runs, more missed opportunities than rallies, and had only Paul Goldschmidt’s solo homer on the board.
They were on the brink of a second loss this week to Washington by scoring a run or less.
The first three Cardinals of the ninth reached base, and Nolan Arenado’s RBI double down the right-field line doubled the Cardinals’ runs and brought the tying runner to the plate with no outs. That spark proved worth the wait.
