MLB
After coming off arguably their best series in two seasons, the Cardinals laid an egg, for lack of a better term, no pun intended. The Cardinals swept their division rival Cubs in the previous series, scoring fifteen runs in three games, moving their division lead to 1.5 games. However, they were outscored 13-1, in the following two games, by the Minnesota Twins. Despite the poor showing, the Redbirds remain tied with the Brewers for first heading into the off day Wednesday.
Cardinals Swept by Twins
Game 1
Monday was a rough day for everyone except Paul DeJong. The team never scored a run on only four hits, three of which belonged to DeJong. The four hits, combined with three walks and a hit by pitch gave the Cards a total of just eight base runners for the game. The pitching wasn’t much better for St. Louis.
John Gant got the start in place of Adam Wainwright. He struggled through 5.1 innings, allowing four runs, on six hits, with two walks and five strikeouts. Matt Bowman did a nice job relieving Gant for and inning and two thirds and Luke Gregerson threw a perfect ninth. However, in between the two, Ryan Sherriff gave up two more runs, on four hits, in just one inning of work. The Twins’ six runs was more than enough to win the game by a final score of 6-0.
Game 2
Tuesday brought with it another six run loss for the Redbirds. This time the Cards only got two hits, as opposed to four the day before. Fortunately one of the two hits was a first inning home run from Jose Martinez that gave the Cardinals a very short lived lead. The Twins got the run back in the top of the second and never surrendered another.
Carlos Martinez took the mound in game two. He had a sub par outing, though it was serviceable. Martinez allowed only two earned runs, on four hits, through five innings. The Cards’ Ace did fall victim to very poor defense behind him, as he allowed two more unearned runs, thanks to three errors. Sam Tuivailala gave up another run in his one inning of work, to make the score 5-1 after six. Then, Tyler Lyons tossed up a two-run bomb in the seventh to put the icing on the cake and extend the Twins’ lead to the final score of 7-1.
Coming Up
After the off day on Wednesday, the Cards will head to the west coast for a four game set against the 13-24 San Diego Padres. This will be St. Louis’ first crack at the Padres this season. After that four game series, the Cardinals will get their chance at redemption in a two game series at Minnesota, after another off day on Monday.
This article was originally written by former TSJ101SPORTS MLB Department editor and writer Canyon Clark. Due to systems modalities, the article has been assigned to the author tag designation “Former Writers”.
