St. Louis Cardinals’ Matt Carpenter, right, is congratulated by Carlos Martinez after hitting a two-run home run during the third inning of a baseball game against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday, Sept. 9, 2016, in St. Louis.
Advertisement
Even though St. Louis defeated Milwaukee 4-3 on Friday night, it is only 31-38 at Busch Stadium and nearly certainly headed for its first losing season at home since 1999.
Jimmy Nelson (7-14) retired the first eight Cardinals before Martinez started a two-out rally with a single up the middle.
Watch the Cardinals Live pregame and postgame shows before and after every St. Louis Cardinals game on FOX Sports Midwest. He got pulled after 3 2/3 innings after giving up eight hits, which included home runs on back-to-back pitches.
“I felt a little but amped up because I wanted to win the game and I was able to tone it down”, Martinez said through an interpreter. The Brewers are unsafe but I’m going against them… “This is when you really have to test yourself and give it your all”. Kevin Siegrist worked a ideal eighth inning to turn the one-run lead over to Seung Hwan Oh, who pitched around a leadoff walk to earn his 17th save.
They go into Saturday’s game a half-game out of the second wild-card spot behind the Mets, who rallied from a 4-0 deficit to beat the Braves 6-4 on Friday night. The Cardinals had dropped consecutive contests before squeezing out a crucial win against the visiting Brewers Friday night. Jonathan Villar leads Milwaukee with 154 hits, Ryan Braun has 81 RBI and Scooter Gennett has 11 home runs. Carlos Martinez allowed three runs in the first three innings, but settled down after.
Gennett’s homer, his 11th of the season, was the first Martinez had allowed to any current hitter on the Brewers.
“The talent-wise we’ve seen”, Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said of Grichuk. “We had to have him”. Nelson fell to 0-7 in his career against the Cardinals. He had started 19 of the Brewers’ previous 21 games since August 18.
“That’s kind of a buzz kill for sure”, Elmore said. “You keep thinking tack on single runs and after that we just broke it open”. He improved to 3-0 in four starts against Milwaukee.
“We didn’t have a lot of hits but we made the most out of them”, Matheny said. Carpenter hit his 19th of the year and Piscotty his 21st, increasing the team’s total for the season to 204.
“Two of the guys who can really hurt him hurt him”, Brewers manager Craig Counsell said of Nelson. “Make mistakes to those guys and that’s what’s going to happen”.
Brewers righty Junior Guerra (8-3) needed 74 pitches to get through five innings in his second start back from the disabled list. “They did a great job right there against a tough pitcher throwing very hard”. “That’s definitely frustrating to give up the lead”.
Garcia talks about the importance of these games in September. “There’s no ground to give up now”. It was the fifth time he’s struck out 14 in a game, and third this season.
Domingo Santana and Orlando Arcia hit back-to-back solo homers in the second inning and the Brewers went on to crush the Cardinals 12-5 at Busch Stadium.
Wong reached base three times by walking twice and getting hit by a pitch.
Cardinals: LHP Michael Wacha (right shoulder inflammation) and RHP Trevor Rosenthal (right shoulder inflammation) both had successful bullpen sessions Wednesday.
Advertisement
That game was Wainwright’s best start of the season, a three-hit shutout of the Marlins, but the veteran is 0-2 in three starts at home since, struggling to win there just as badly as the rest of the Cardinals.
