Biggest win of the year? Cardinals sure hope not. But best game of the season? 5 reasons why

Having been there in the dugout to celebrate Masyn Winn filching the game’s first run and spent a good half inning or so running a massage gun along his shoulders, loosening up the area right there near the name on his jersey, Nolan Arenado was certainly ready for manager Oliver Marmol’s question in the ninth inning of his scheduled off day.

“Do you want to end this game?” Marmol said he asked.

“And he did,” the manager confirmed.

The climax of one of the most compelling games in years for the Cardinals and one of the most significant wins so far this season came when Arenado emerged from the dugout in the bottom of the ninth inning to pinch-hit on his day off.

Nolan Gorman’s double and Pedro Pages’ bunt put the potential winning run at third base with no outs. Against the Dodgers’ five-man infielder and reliever Ben Casparius, Arenado lofted a fly ball to left that no fielder could reach before it landed and hopped into the stands. The official scorer dubbed it a rulebook double.

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Arenado’s RBI and fourth hit already in the series was the culmination of an afternoon at Busch Stadium that was a taut, scoreless pitchers’ duel into the eighth. The Cardinals took a lead on Winn’s derring-do baserunning, lost it on a wild pitch that brought Shohei Ohtani home, and then won it in the ninth inning. The engrossing game featured two runs scored without the ball leaving the infield and the winning run scored when an outfielder left to play infield.

With the win the Cardinals won a series against the defending World Series champions Dodgers and have a chance to sweep the series Sunday. Within the win, the Cardinals captured so much of who they’ve become in their rise to relevance in the standings.

They got stubborn pitching.

They got a pivotal moment of relief.

They’ve held the Dodgers to one run in 18 innings — and it scored on a wild pitch.

They’ve had surehanded defense, surefooted baserunning, Arenado off the bench, and another in a lengthening list of close, entertaining games during which they MacGyver ways to win.

“We pitch quality. We play quality,” starter Erick Fedde said. “That’s kind of the style of our game. We’re always going to make it tough on the other team and force them to try and not make errors, and we’re not going to make errors. That kind of leads to close games.

“These are what important games should be like,” the right-hander continued. “We want to win every game by 10. The reality is when it gets down to the nitty-gritty time these are how games are going to be. The more we can play like that the more we’re used to it and the more we’re comfortable.”

In the bottom of the ninth of a 1-1 game, Arenado stood at the base of the dugout steps readying for his moment, right behind teammate Lars Nootbaar.

Nootbaar said he did not know Arenado was going to pinch-hit for Victor Scott II until he reached for the pine tar rag to improve his grip, and Arenado asked for it first.

“All right,” Nootbaar recalled thinking, “Nolan is in the game.”

He was about to end it with the 13th walk-off hit of his career, his fifth as a Cardinal, and his second of this season.

How the game reached Arenado on his scheduled day off is a story of a jam-packed staring contest that doesn’t reveal all of its defining events in a box score.

“This group doesn’t scare, and they really do enjoy those moments,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “There are a lot of different moments of mental toughness throughout that game that is something you definitely want to continue to build on.”

5. Winn’s dash

In the eighth inning of a scoreless tie, shortstop Winn hit a one-out single. He got to second on Brendan Donovan’s base hit. Both Cardinals remained at those bases with two outs and reliever Casparius facing Alec Burleson and another chase for a Dodger pitcher to slip out of a jam.

This one came right back at him.

Burleson scalded a grounder that ricocheted off Casparius and toward third base. The pitcher had to retrieve it, and that put him right in Winn’s line of sight. Winn paused slightly near third as Casparius turned his back to the runner and went for the final out at first base. When Winn saw the throw going up the line — and possibly toward right field, he resumed racing for home. Third-base coach Ron “Pop” Warner shouted for him to “go, go, go.”

Freddie Freeman was able to retrieve the throw, but he paused just enough before throwing home that Winn slid in ahead of the ball.

“Pure athleticism and he has zero fear,” Marmol said. “And that’s what you want out of a young guy. … You don’t win that game without him being fearless there.”

Win Probability Added (WPA) tracks the ebbs and flows of a game and by comparing one game to thousands of others can calculate how a single play shifts a team’s chances to win. Burleson’s single — and more specifically Winn’s run — was the most dramatic WPA change of the game. It increased the Cardinals’ chances of winning by 27.8%.

4. Matz’s escape

The pitch that most improved the Cardinals’ chances of winning came shortly after the liner that nearly knocked Steven Matz from the game before he could deliver it’s decisive sinker.

Mookie Betts drilled a line drive right back at Matz in the seventh inning.

The Cardinals’ lefty reliever entered the game in the sixth to retire both batters he faced and stranded the two runners he inherited from Fedde. Matz’s work in the sixth kept the game score into the seventh, but Betts’ laser threatened to knock Matz from the game entirely. The Cardinals’ lefty got his arm up in time to block the ball before it hit him in the face. He was unable to retrieve the carom before Betts reached base.

That brought Freeman to the plate with one out and all kinds of opportunity to break the scoreless tie.

Matz waved off attention from the trainer.

He got it anyway but stayed in the game.

“We were joking,” Fedde said, “that he’s probably going to throw his hardest pitch of the year.”

Matz threw Freeman four consecutive sinkers — touching 95.8 mph with one. Freeman chopped the fourth one to second, and the Cardinals spun a double play to end the inning. Matz’s 1 2/3 scoreless innings came a day after he pitched a scoreless ninth, and it reaffirmed how vital he’s become to the Cardinals as both a late-inning and high-leverage lefty.

“Big moment there,” Marmol said.

It shifted the WPA in his team’s favor by 14.7%, per Statcast.

3. Fedde’s persistence

While most of it unfolded over time during his 5 1/3 scoreless innings opposite Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s six scoreless and nine strikeouts, Fedde did have a moment in the third inning that captured his bulldog approach against the Dodgers’ star-studded lineup.

A leadoff single by No. 9 hitter Hyeseong Kim brought the top of the order around with three former MVPs in a row, like the final three bouts of Nintendo’s Punch-Out!!

Fedde stayed to his strength and landed his jab.

He got Ohtani to pop up on a cutter. Betts tried to hold his swing but instead clipped a sweeper and grounded out to first. Freeman grounded out on a cutter.

“Big goal with this lineup is to keep Nos. 7, 8, and 9 off before they come up,” Fedde said. “In that situation, it’s just don’t back down. You’ve got to go after guys. I think in those situations, your goal there is not to give up a big inning, No. 1, and then overall keep going at them.”

Fedde walked four and didn’t miss many bats, but of the 18 balls the Dodgers put in play 11 were either a groundout or a fly out. He held the top three batters in LA’s lineup to 1 for 8 in the game and 0 for 4 with a runner in scoring position.

The Dodgers were 0 for 12 in those spots in the game.

They’re 1 for 25 in the series with runners in scoring position.

2. Gorman’s double and Pages’ bunt

Back in the lineup as a replacement for Arenado at third and a left-handed bat against the Dodgers’ right-handed Yamamoto, Gorman led off the ninth inning for the Cardinals. He had a single and two strikeouts earlier in the game. And the Cardinals have conceded that he needs more playing time to find his rhythm at the plate, and also that they have not given him that playing time because of the performance of others.

With Arenado saved to hit for Scott, Gorman started the ninth — and he rocked the first pitch he saw for a double into the right-field corner.

The soaring double left his bat at 111.6 mph, his hardest hit of the season.

That put the winning run at second immediately after the Dodgers had tied the game in the top of the ninth. The lead ruptured on closer Ryan Helsley because of a couple of unfortunate bounces. Ohtani reached on a single that bounced off second base, and Ohtani scored when Freeman struck out — but the breaking ball skipped past Pages for a wild pitch. Gorman’s double brought Pages to the plate just after he took off his gear, just after the tying run came past him.

“It’s easy to come into the dugout and be in your own head and not focus on what’s next,” Marmol said. “But for him to go back out there and with two strikes get the bunt down — that’s the game.”

Pages dropped a two-strike bunt.

Casparius threw wide to first, and that error allowed Pages to be at first and Gorman’s pinch-runner, Jose Barrero, to reach third. That altered the inning and how the Dodgers could approach it. Pages at first led directly to the Dodgers bringing in a fifth infielder as Arenado came to the plate.

“Him being safe at first base kind of changes a lot of things,” Nootbaar said.

1. Arenado’s winner

In the training room down the hall from the Cardinals’ clubhouse, Fedde and Matz were receiving treatment after their appearances and watching the game. Fedde said he’s too impatient to watch the broadcast feed that is on a slight delay — so the roar and vibration of the crowd gives away what happens before the images on the screen do — and had the overhead view from center field. As the ninth gathered momentum, Fedde asked the head trainer if he could pause the treatment and just watch the game.

They were talking about when Arenado might appear.

“Nolan is hard on himself and he thinks he can always be better,” Fedde said. “If there’s any guy who steps up in big moments it’s him, and there is nobody I’d rather have at the plate with a Cardinals jersey on at that time.”

The third baseman who had the day off, the third baseman who spent the winter preparing to be traded and playing somewhere other than here in St. Louis, and the third baseman who delivered to punctuate the Cardinals’ game of the year.

“To go toe to toe and come out with a win tells you a lot about this group,” Marmol said. “They’re young but they’re playing the game the right way. It’s fun.”

Cardinals face Yoshinobu Yamamoto in second of three against the Los Angeles Dodgers