Albies was on deck in the fifth inning when Drake Baldwin skied a pitch high and toward shallow left field. Cardinals left fielder Lars Nootbaar and third baseman Blaze Jordan gave chase. It looked like the ball might parachute right between them – in that no man’s zone – until Winn zoomed in, his hat left fast behind, to make the catch and end the inning.
That avoided Albies coming to the plate for a third time against McGreevy, two on, and one big decision for Marmol.
“That would be a call for sure,” Marmol said.
Instead, Albies led off the sixth inning – and McGreevy would be there to face him. The right-hander thought between his innings about how to attack Albies with something new while he still didn’t have everything sharp.
“I always try to pitch like I’m a high school pitcher out there,” McGreevy explained. “Like, what would a college coach want to see? Guys touched you twice – how are you going to react? Are you going to give into him and have him go deep again? Or are you going to finally make an adjustment and punch him out?”
He started Albies with a curveball and then showed him a sinker and a slider. Albies fouled off the slider to fall behind in the count. McGreevy went back to the changeup, but instead of trying to land the misbehaving pitch he made the most of what it was doing and tried to use it as a chase pitch. Albies didn’t bite. That allowed McGreevy to come back with the pitch that had been effective throughout the start – the cutter. Albies missed on an 87.5-mph cutter for the first of the sixth.
McGreevy said he looked to see if first baseman Alec Burleson was encroaching on the mound – a sign that he saw a visitor coming from the dugout.