ST. LOUIS, Mo. (AP) – Alec Burleson hit a two-run homer to cap off an eight-run outburst in the sixth inning as the St. Louis Cardinals rallied for a 9-7 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Rookie JJ Wetherholt also homered for St. Louis.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Aranda homered for Tampa Bay, which took a 7-1 lead with six runs in the top of the sixth.<\/p>\n
St. Louis answered back with eight runs in its half, including run-scoring sacrifice flies by Wetherholt and Ivan Herrera, which tied the game 7-all.<\/p>\n
Burleson followed with a blast to right field.<\/p>\n
Both teams sent 11 batters to the plate in the inning.<\/p>\n
Jonny DeLuca had a two-run single to highlight the sixth inning for Tampa Bay, which had won four of its previous five games on opening day.<\/p>\n
Riley O\u2019Brien picked up the win with 1 1\/3 innings of scoreless relief. Ryne Stanek earned the save. He struck out Richie Palacios with the bases loaded to end the game.<\/p>\n
St. Louis outfielder Nathan Church added a two-run hit in the sixth. Church, Burleson and Victor Scott II had three hits each.<\/p>\n
Yandy D\u00edaz, Ben Williamson and Nick Fortes had three hits each for the Rays.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay starter Drew Rasmussen allowed just one run on four hits over five innings in his first opening day assignment.<\/p>\n
Cardinals starter Matthew Liberatore surrendered one run on seven hits in five innings.<\/p>\n
The Cardinals are in rebuilding mode after trading veterans Sonny Gray, Brendan Donovan, Nolan Arenado and Willson Contreras in the offseason for prospects.<\/p>\n
The game time temperature of 91 degrees was the hottest opening day in the history of Busch Stadium, eclipsing the previous mark of 73 degrees on April 5, 1999.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KMOV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS, Mo. (AP) – Alec Burleson hit a two-run homer to cap off an eight-run outburst in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[15207,5,6012,18050,1453,4,41261,297,67,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":["post-646215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-rays","tag-alex-burleson","tag-baseball","tag-ivan-herrera","tag-jj-wetherholt","tag-matthew-liberatore","tag-mlb","tag-nathan-church","tag-rays","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabayrays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116300365772891275","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}