Cardinals starting pitcher Lance Lynn speaks with the media on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, after a game vs. the Pirates at Busch Stadium. (Video by Ethan Erickson, Post-Dispatch)
When asked this week about what he hopes young talent Jordan Walker gets from spending the final month of the season back in the majors and back as an everyday player, Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol had a succinct, one-word answer:
鈥淐辞苍蹿颈诲别苍肠别.鈥
If Walker鈥檚 celebratory flex at second base was any indication, it鈥檚 working.
After an early four-run lead slipped away from them, the Cardinals emphatically pounced on the Pittsburgh Pirates bullpen for six runs, and Walker鈥檚 bases-clearing double provided the exclamation point. A day after his home run was the difference in the game, Walker had the pile-on hit that shoved the Cardinals to a 10-5 victory against he Pirates at Busch Stadium. The win continued the 77-75 Cardinals鈥 attempt to break the gravitational pull of .500 even as it continued to slingshot Walker into a September to remember.
With the bases loaded and the Cardinals only just taking back the lead, Walker hammered a ball down the third base line that scored three teammates. A month that began with a five-hit game at Yankee Stadium has become one with 12 RBIs in 15 games and seven extra-base hits.
The misplaced lead in the sixth cost Sonny Gray a win in his final home start of the regular season. Michael McGreevy, a few hours after his promotion, entered to snag the win with three scoreless innings of relief. In two major league appearances, McGreevy has two wins聽鈥 twice as many wins as he鈥檚 allowed runs.
The Pirates called up former Cardinal Jake Woodford to make Wednesday's start, and while he held steady for several innings, he remained winless in the majors since the Cardinals visited London.
Nolan Arenado reached base five times and was in the middle of the Cardinals taking their first lead, pulling away for a larger lead and then reclaiming it in the decisive seventh.
6-run flood dunks Bucs
What started the rally was Masyn Winn鈥檚 leadoff homer in the seventh inning that tied the game. But what kept it going was an error and a couple of walks that contributed to a complete meltdown by the Pirates bullpen. The trouble began with former lockdown closer David Bednar when a misplay behind him was followed by a walk given up by him.
Through the middle of the inning, the Cardinals had seven consecutive runners reach base. Six of them did without the help of an error.
Before Walker cleared the bases, the Cardinals took the lead with Ivan Herrera鈥檚 infield single and added to it with Lars Nootbaar鈥檚 single up the middle. The Cardinals slipped past the Pirates on Tuesday despite going 1 for 12 with runners in scoring position. Through the rally in that one inning Wednesday, the Cardinals were 3 for 3 with runners in scoring position and bookended those hits with two walks.聽
Sonny sure seems comfy at home
While everything from the standings to the consistency of his starts has not gone as hoped in Gray鈥檚 first year, he has found a welcome home at Busch Stadium.
Few pitchers have been as good at Busch or at their home ballparks as Gray had been through his first 15 starts as a Cardinal at their ballpark. In a total of 93鈪 innings at Busch, he鈥檚 struck out 111 batters. Going into Wednesday鈥檚 game, he had 103 strikeouts at Busch against only 85 base runners allowed. He sported a 9-5 record to go with a 2.56 home ERA.
He saved one of his few clunkers for his final home start. Though most of the damage was done after he left.
For only the second time this season, Gray allowed four or more runs in a home start. Two of the four scored after he was in the dugout having allowed nine hits in 5鈪 innings and leaving two runners behind for the bullpen.聽
Gray joins Cardinals鈥 200 strikeout club
Before an inning could slip through the rocky defense by Walker in right field and past him, Gray got a hold of it by joining one of the most exclusive clubs in Cardinals history.
The Pirates already scored two runs, hacked the Cardinals鈥 lead in half and had the potential tying run on base with one out when Gray did what he does better than any other starter in the rotation.
He struck out Bucs.
Gray finished the inning and squelched the Pirates threat with back-to-back swinging strikeouts. The first of those two strikeouts came from rookie Billy Cook and was Gray's 200th of his season. His 200-strikeout season is the 20th in Cardinals history, and he鈥檚 the ninth different pitcher to surpass 200 strikeouts in a single season with the club. The most recent Cardinal to reach 200 was Jack Flaherty in 2019. The only Cardinal with multiple 200-strikeout seasons since 1990 is Adam Wainwright, who did it three times.
Hall of Famer Bob Gibson has nine of the Cardinals鈥 20 such seasons, and that includes the top five single-season totals in club history.
Gray and Flaherty are the only Cardinals on the list to eclipse 200 strikeouts and not also pitch more than 200 innings in that season.
Flaherty came 11 outs shy of 200 innings in 2019.
Gray has yet to throw his 170th inning of the season, and with one start at Coors Field remaining in his regular season, it鈥檚 unlikely he鈥檒l get the 175 innings. How he鈥檚 accumulated so many strikeouts in so few innings is with the second-highest strikeout rate of his career. His 30.2% strikeout entering Wednesday鈥檚 start was a significant spike from last year鈥檚 24.3%.
He had two strikeouts to start the pivotal sixth inning, but he did not finish that inning.
That鈥檚 where things went haywire.
One pitch and so long lead
The length of previous innings bloated Gray鈥檚 pitch count so that when the sixth started going sideways, bench coach Daniel Descalso and pitching coach Dusty Blake had an alternative ready.
When the two strikeouts to start the inning were followed by two singles to again put the tying run on base, the Cardinals lifted Gray for a reliever.
It took one pitch for Gray鈥檚 lead to become a deficit.
A day after pitching the eighth inning and guiding the Cardinals through one of his few genuine setup assignments, Matthew Liberatore misplaced the lead and allowed two inherited runners to score before he threw a second pitch. Liberatore entered the inning to face No. 9 hitter Cook.
Eight games into his big league career and toting a .150 average, Cook struck out in both of his at-bats vs. Gray. He didn鈥檛 let a pitch go by from Liberatore.
Cook鈥檚 first big league homer was a three-run shot into the Cardinals bullpen that erased a two-run lead and delivered a 5-4 edge for the Pirates. The Cardinals鈥 four-run lead that came while Gray cooked with eight strikeouts had vanished in a blink.
Turner, Marmol ejected
While both sides appear to benefit from the elasticity on the outer edges of the strike zone, only one of the teams ended up seeing someone ejected for offering an opinion.
An exchange at the beginning of the fourth inning led to some initial confusion and then a lengthy argument delivered by Marmol. Lars Nootbaar struck out on a 93 mph fastball on the edge that left him in disbelief. He walked back to the dugout, and that was when home plate umpire D.J. Reyburn appeared to follow him to deliver an ejection聽鈥 but not to Nootbaar. Reyburn ejected hitting coach Turner Ward from his camera-well spot in the dugout. When Marmol emerged to argue, it wasn鈥檛 long before the manager received his sixth ejection of the season.聽
Another day, another triple
How the Cardinals built their early 4-0 lead was similar to how they scored the day before.
A home run.
And a triple.
Just in reverse order.
Brendan Donovan followed Arenado鈥檚 leadoff single with a two-run homer off their former teammate, Woodford. Donovan鈥檚 13th homer of the season came during an island of production around which Woodford retired eight of the first 10 Cardinals he faced. That stretch effectively ended in the third for Woodford as Paul Goldschmidt stretched for third and his first triple of the season.
Goldschmidt drilled a ball that caromed off the right field wall and away from Bryan De La Cruz. A run scored easily, and Goldschmidt raced for third so he could be the next one home on Arenado鈥檚 RBI single.
A day after Luken Baker鈥檚 triple and Walker鈥檚 homer provided two runs that were enough to win, Donovan鈥檚 two-run homer and Goldschmidt鈥檚 triple that generated two runs were not enough. They needed a late avalanche of assistance to assure a victory Wednesday.
Cardinals starting pitcher Lance Lynn speaks with the media on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, after a game vs. the Pirates at Busch Stadium. (Video …
Cardinals outfielder Jordan Walker sprints toward first on his three-run double as Brendan Donovan (33) comes home to score in the seventh inning of a game against the Pirates on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, at Busch Stadium.
Cardinals outfielder Lars Nootbaar (21) celebrates with teammates Ivan Herrera (48) and Brendan Donovan after scoring on a double by Jordan Walker in the seventh inning of a game against the Pirates on Wednesday, Sept, 18, 2024, at Busch Stadium.