CINCINNATI — It took two home runs from Paul Goldschmidt to make the most out an early deluge of hits and give the bullpen a lead to hold for four innings and the Cardinals a golden opportunity to seize Wednesday.
The Cardinals’ first baseman hit homers in two of his first three at-bats to muscle the Cardinals to a one-run lead while starter Miles Mikolas was still the game. It took two scoreless innings from Genesis Cabrera and tidy work from Luis Garcia and Giovanny Gallegos to secure the 5-4 victory against Cincinnati in Game 1 of a doubleheader at Great American Ball Park.
Gallegos’ save was his second in as many games since moving into the first choice for the last inning. He faced the top of the Reds' order and retired them in order to keep Joey Votto in the on-deck circle.
The win cut the Reds’ lead in the wild-card race down to 1 ½ games.
The two division rivals play again Wednesday night.
A doubleheader sweep by the Cardinals (68-63) would not only move them to within a half game of the Reds but also give them one fewer loss than Cincinnati.
Neither starter had much success finding anything but the heart of the strike zone through the first half of the game and that led to the teams juggling the lead back and forth. The Cardinals took a lead on Goldschmidt’s solo homer in the first, lost it during the Reds’ three-run rally in the second, tied it with a sacrifice fly in the third and then moved ahead in the fourth when Goldschmidt hit his 24th homer of the season. That one came near to winning a truck for a fan, and if he was a Reds player probably would.
The multi-homer game was the 19th of Goldschmidt’s career and second in the past week. In his past 97 at-bats, Goldschmidt has 37 hits.
Seventeen have gone for extra bases.
As Mikolas exited the game, Cabrera entered for his first appearance since the nadir of his season in Pitt. When last the lefty appeared, he allowed six runs and six hits without recording out to a team that seemed to read Cabrera well. The lefty allowed two singles, including one check-swing accident that didn’t leave the grass of the infield, and he had a wild pitch. But tightened from there. He got a groundout to end the fourth inning, and the only single against him in the fifth was erased by a snazzy double play turned at second base by third baseman Nolan Arenado.
Mikolas used 55 pitches to get nine outs, and after a perfect start to the game with a breezy first inning, he had three Reds reaching base before he could get a second out in the first inning. The 2-0 lead the Cardinals had for Mikolas after two innings vanished in the span of six innings with lefty Wade Miley delivering the go-ahead runs. The Reds’ pitcher guided a groundball down the third-base line, between Arenado and the base, and then skipping, hopping, bobbing into the left-field corner.
That allowed both runners on base to score, and with his double Miley tripled his RBI total for the season from one in the previous five months to two on the first day of September.
Of the hits Mikolas allowed, one came on a groundball that went against the grain of a shift and other was a curveball ricocheted of his foot.
Miley’s double flipped the score but didn’t stop the seesaw.
He had more difficulty stopping the Cardinals from getting hits than he had getting one. The Cardinals were so successful so often and so early against the Reds’ lefty that it might be worth checking the video to see if he was showing his cards. On the third pitch he saw from Miley, Goldschmidt drilled a pitch to straightaway center and almost onto the deck of the faux riverboat atop the batter’s eye.
The ball traveled an estimated 439 feet and left Goldschmidt’s bat at 110 mph.
Harrison Bader added a solo homer in the second inning, and through the first three innings against Miley the Cardinals had three runs and had stranded four runners. Miley had not allowed more than 11 hits in any other game this season, but by the time the Cardinals had their 22nd batter of the game at the plate they had 12 hits.
With Tyler O’Neill’s double in the fourth inning, the Cardinals improved to 12-for-18 against Miley in the game.
They had two hits against the bullpen to give Gallegos the narrowest of beams to walk.
