As Friday night’s game in St. Louis crept toward the ninth, it had all the hallmarks of a very dumb 2025 Yankees loss. Did the offense fail to take advantage of numerous chances to get some runs to turn a close game into a comfortable one? Check. Did some members of the bullpen struggle, leading to others having basically no wiggle room in crunch moments? You bet. Would a loss have wasted a perfectly decent outing from a starter, who had the Yankees in a perfectly fine spot when he left? Absolutely.

On this occasion, though, that didn’t happen. The bullpen got just enough outs, and despite a 3-for-17 showing with runners in scoring position, the lineup scored just enough themselves, having gotten a perfectly decent start from Luis Gil. It got awfully stressful at points, but the Yankees came away with the win at Busch Stadium, beating the middling Cardinals by a 4-3 score.

The Yankees’ offense got off to a very nice start against the Cardinals’ Andre Pallante. After Trent Grisham drew a walk to start the game, Ben Rice put the two of them in scoring position with a double. While Aaron Judge’s groundout could only score one run, Jazz Chisholm Jr. insured a crooked number when he hit a two-run homer later on.

Two innings later, Chisholm was involved again as New York added on. The Yankees’ second baseman drew a one out walk, stole second, and then moved to third on a wild pitch. That put him in position to score easily on Jasson Domínguez’s single. It was 4-0 early and the Bombers were in position to run away with this one. It didn’t happen.

While he did benefit from a couple different double plays, Gil made it through the first five innings without much trouble. His first legitimate jam came in the fifth, when the Cardinals had runners on the corners with nobody out. However, Gil worked around that to get out of the inning damage-free.

St. Louis did get their breakthrough the following inning, though. After Gil got the first out of the sixth, back-to-back doubles from Lars Nootbaar and Masyn Winn brought home a run and chased Gil from the game. Mark Leiter Jr. came in and got out of the inning by inducing the Cardinals’ fourth double play of the game.

As for Gil, he finished with a final line of one run allowed in 5.1 innings. Those came on four walks and three hits as he did a good job working around runners.

In the top of the seventh, the Yankees had two on with nobody out and the heart of the order due up and failed to tack on to their lead. That failure had real potential to make the Yankees quickly regret it, and that was immediately tested in the bottom half of the inning.

Camilo Doval came in for the seventh and got two outs, but walked Jordan Walker and hit Pedro Pagés in the process. One Victor Scott II double later, and another run scored. The Cardinals now had the tying run in scoring position. Aaron Boone then called up Luke Weaver to try and get out of the spot, but a wild pitch from him got through Rice and made it a one-run ballgame at 4-3. Weaver came back after that to strike out Nootbaar, but the lead was now perilously thin.

Weaver came back out for the eighth and got the first two outs, but then gave up a single to Iván Herrera. Things then got interesting once again when while attempting a pickoff throw, Weaver caught Paul Goldschmidt off guard and sent the ball past the first baseman, who couldn’t react in time after entering as a defensive replacement. Weaver once again needed to come up with an inning-ending strikeout to keep the Yankees ahead.

For good measure, the Yankees left the bases loaded in the ninth, again failing to add anything to their lead. That left them turning to David Bednar to try and walk the tightrope in the ninth. To his credit, he did so perfectly. Bednar struck out two and then benefitted from a nice running catch from Cody Bellinger to close the book on the win.

The last couple innings weren’t exactly pleasant viewing, but the game goes in the win column regardless. Combined with Cleveland’s loss to Atlanta, the Yankees have a 1.5-game lead on the last Wild Card spot, though they were unable to gain any ground on the clubs ahead of them (Toronto, Boston, and Seattle all won).

Game two of the series in St. Louis will be tomorrow at 7:15 p.m. ET on Fox. Max Fried and former Yankee Sonny Gray are expected to be the starters for that one.