There was a lot to like Saturday night as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Houston Astros again thanks to a strong effort from Andre Pallante and three home runs. There were also some things not to like about the Cardinals bullpen, but more on that later.<\/p>\n
The Cardinals jumped out to an early lead in the 1st inning when JJ Wetherholt<\/a> and Ivan Herrera<\/a> were hit by pitches. Nolan Gorman<\/a> came through with a clutch 2-strike double down the right field line to give St. Louis a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n Andre Pallante<\/a> provided the Cardinals a very solid 5 inning effort giving up only 3 hits and 1 run, but that 1 run went a long way thanks to Alvarez in the bottom of the 1st inning cutting the Cardinals lead to 2-1.<\/p>\n The St. Louis Cardinals offense continues to be relentless as Masyn Winn<\/a> turned on an inside pitch in the top of the 3rd inning slamming a 2-run homer into the Crawford Boxes<\/a> making it 4-1 St. Louis.<\/p>\n In the 6th inning, Jos\u00e9 Ferm\u00edn<\/a> joined the Cardinals home run parade as he also sailed a ball into the Crawford Boxes in left field extending the St. Louis lead to 5-1.<\/p>\n Alec Burleson<\/a> decided that the fans in right field deserved a souvenir as he launched a shot into the upper deck making it 6-1 St. Louis. Alec would almost homer twice as he banged a ball high off the left field wall for a double in the 9th.<\/p>\n The charitable Astros decided to gift the Cardinals a run in the top of the 8th inning when Gordon threw a wild pitch which scored Nathan Church who had reached on an 8th inning bunt making it 7-1 Cardinals. If it\u2019s any consolation to Houston, it\u2019s that Church would have scored anyway after JJ Wetherholt reached on an infield single down the 3rd base line on a ball that went off the end of his bat.<\/p>\n The St. Louis Cardinals bullpen had a solid start to their night as Gordon Graceffo<\/a> held the Astros scoreless in the 6th and 7th innings. However, Matt Svanson<\/a> entered the game in the 8th and promptly walked Altuve, Alvarez and Correa to load the bases with no outs for Christian Walker<\/a>. Fortunately, Walker kindly hit into a double play which scored Altuve which made the score 7-2 Cardinals. Svanson did escape the inning only allowing 1 run which was borderline miraculous considering how wild he was. George Soriano<\/a> came in to pitch the bottom of the 9th inning. He did a brief Matt Svanson impersonation by walking two batters and then giving up a 3-run blast to Whitcomb. That meant Riley O\u2019Brien<\/a> did not get the night off and came in to close out the Astros which he fortunately did.<\/p>\n The Cardinals will go for the sweep Sunday afternoon when Matthew Liberatore<\/a> (0-1 with a 4.29 ERA) starts for St. Louis and Mike Burrows<\/a> (1-3 with a 6.54 ERA) will be on the mound for the Astros. First pitch at 1:10pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a lot to like Saturday night as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Houston Astros again…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[5,160,4,673,67,77959,4311,4310],"class_list":{"0":"post-678979","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-cardinals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cardinals","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-st-louis","12":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","13":"tag-st-louis-cardinals-game-information","14":"tag-stlouis","15":"tag-stlouiscardinals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116430573644057356","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678979","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=678979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}