St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Victor Scott II gets his hand checked out as the play is reviewed after being hit by a pitch during the game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers in Busch Stadium in St. Louis on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
Allie Schallert, Post-Dispatch
By throwing a little bit of everything the Tigers had left in their bullpen, they were able to hold the Cardinals to pretty much nothing.
The Detroit Tigers spliced together a bullpen game that quieted one of the top offenses in the majors this past month and took the series with a 5-1 victory against the Cardinals on Wednesday afternoon at Busch Stadium. The Tigers held the Cardinals to a bunt single through the first five innings, and the Cardinals did not muster much else other than a single chance to tie the game in the seventh inning.
Just days after the Cardinals thumped a similar patchwork of pitchers for 16 hits and 11 runs, six Tigers pitchers held the Cardinals to one run on five hits.
The Cardinals had not lost back-to-back games since the first two days of the month, and they had gone seven consecutive series without losing one.
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Detroit outfielder Riley Greene scored his team’s first three runs as they capitalized on grounders that got through and walks offered by Cardinals starter Andre Pallante (4-3). The right-hander allowed three runs on four hits in 5 2/3 innings.
In the seventh inning, the Cardinals paired singles from Alec Burleson and Nolan Gorman to produce a chance to shape the matchup that could possibly tie the game.
Ahead of Gorman’s at-bat, the Tigers continued their relay-race relief approach with lefty Tyler Holton entering the game with the possibility of facing two left-handed batters. Gorman greeted him with a single, and it was the right-handed batter, Jordan Walker, whom Holton had the most success against. He caught Walker looking for the young right fielder’s second strikeout of the game.
Instead of letting Victor Scott II to take his at-bat and try for an encore of his roped single the previous inning, manager Oliver Marmol went for the matchup.
He pinch-hit right-handed batter Yohel Pozo against the lefty Holton and had Jose Barrero set to pinch-run and take over in second. With two runners in scoring position and the tying run at second base due to a wild pitch, Pozo flew out to center field to end the inning.
The Tigers widened their lead in the eighth.
Pallante complicates start
Every ground-ball pitcher has to accept that some grounders are going to get through even the best lockdown defense.
The goal is to minimize the traffic caused by more controllable events.
Pallante, one of the game’s top practitioners of the ground-ball arts, misplaced a scoreless tie in the second inning when two meek hits slipped past the reach of infielders. Greene poked a ball the other way past a shifted infield for the first base hit of the game, and he advanced to third on a ground ball that slipped up the middle. That allowed him to score on a sacrifice fly.
Although he pitched with some added velocity and an uptick of 1 mph for a average fastball of 95.3 mph, Pallante invited the other two runs he allowed with walks. The right-hander allowed four hits, but he matched that with four walks. Greene walked with two outs in the fourth inning, and that became a rally that doubled Detroit’s lead to 2-0. In the sixth — just before turning the game over to a reliever — Pallante walked back-to-back batters. The Tigers would go on to score a third run later in the inning.
The fallout from the walks or even the ground balls that found seams could have been worse for Pallante if not for what all ground-ball-getters have to rely on.
With help from wandering Tigers first baseman Spencer Torkelson, the Cardinals got two outs on the bases that minimized Detroit’s rallies. Torkelson ran into a double play when he tried to tag up from first base and Nolan Arenado cut the throw home to nab Torkelson easily. In the sixth, after Pallante’s final two walks, Torkelson tried to score when the Cardinals turned their attention to this teammate between first and second base. Gorman pivoted and threw home to get Torkelson at the plate and end that inning.
The rundowns rewarded Brendan Donovan with two assists from left field.
Hits few but zeroes abound
When the game reached the middle of the sixth inning, the Cardinals had produced a single hit, and even it did not get past the pitcher’s mound.
The Cardinals’ only run as the Tigers cycled through pitchers for the first five innings was Burleson’s successful attempt to bunt against the shift for a single. He nudge the ball toward the third baseman and then rumbled to first in the second inning to put two runners on base with no outs.
The potential of the rally fizzled from there.
The Cardinals had two at-bats with a runner in scoring position in the first five innings. And both of them came right there in the second inning. And both of them ended in flyouts. When Gorman flew out to left field without advancing either runner, the Tigers continued what became a streak with two different pitchers getting 12 outs from 12 Cardinals batters.
A double play in the fourth erased the only base runner the Cardinals had until the sixth inning and a familiar face entered their line of sight.
Cardinals crack the goose egg
The Tigers rearranged their rotation so that former Cardinal Jack Flaherty did not start Wednesday afternoon as originally announced. That choice meant Detroit had a second bullpen game of the series, and that gave the Cardinals a second look Wednesday at the arm who started Monday.
Lefty Sean Guenther was the opener for Monday’s game and tasked with going only a handful of batters into that evening before a long reliever took over.
Guenther allowed all three batters he faced to reach.
The lefty was out of the game, and the Cardinals had a lead they would not relinquish. Fast-forward to Wednesday, and Guenther entered for the bottom of the sixth inning and potentially another series of at-bats with the top of the Cardinals lineup. But first, he had to retire No. 9 hitter Scott II.
Scott started the sixth a lot like the Cardinals started Monday and singled to right field. The speedster took second on a flyout to right field to get into scoring position with two outs. Guenther was gone, and the inning tilted toward the earlier failed chance for the Cardinals. Willson Contreras yanked it back with a single up the middle that scored Scott and inched the Cardinals back into the game.
Their next chance to tie it would come in the seventh after pivotal relief.
JoJo with the KO
The trouble was entirely the Cardinals’ doing, so it took a reliever to handle the undoing.
Both relievers Phil Maton and JoJo Romero hit batters in the seventh inning, and sandwiched in between those base runners was a walk from Maton to put the bases loaded for cleanup hitter Greene. The Tigers outfielder entered the game among the league leaders with 34 RBIs, and he scored the Tigers’ first three runs.
Greene singled in the second and scored.
He walked with two outs in the fourth and scored.
He walked again in the sixth — and scored.
In the seventh, he came up with the bases loaded, two outs, Romero on the mound and the opportunity to democratize the scoring.
Greene never got his bat on a pitch.
Romero leveled the count with a 92.6 mph sinker that Greene took for a strike. Romero tried one more sinker to the left-handed Greene and then just spun him. Romero put an 83.8 mph slider past Greene’s bat in the strike zone and then got Greene fishing for an 85.4 mph slider outside of the zone to end the inning.
That strikeout vaporized Greene’s chances of breaking the game open and set up the Cardinals for their best shot at tying the game.
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