The Cardinals jumped out to an early lead for once, but the Giants came back to win 6-4 and are one win away from the World Series. The Giants seemingly magical way of scoring runs overcame the Cards beating the Giants’ previously bulletproof playoff starter Ryan Vogelsong into submission in the third inning.
The Giants took the lead in a nightmarish sixth inning. The Giants sent eight batters to the plate scoring three runs to take a 6-4 lead and the biggest betrayer of the Cardinals was one of their strengths, defense. The bottom of the inning opened with the newly-minted relief whiz kid, Marco Gonzales issuing a lead-off walk to Juan Perez. Brandon Crawford then proceeded to single and Matt Duffy bunted them over, aka Giants baseball- Turning infield dribblers into wine since 2014. With the infield in, Gonzales did his job and induced a weakly hit ground ball from Gregor Blanco. Matt Adams fielded the ball, but he stumbled and double clutched causing the throw to be late to the plate and the tying run to score. Joe Panik then hit a rocket right at the first base bag. Adams made a good play to field it and step on the base but instead of checking Crawford at third fired wildly to second where Peralta could not make a tag and allowed Crawford to score. That play ran Gonzales. Buster Posey added an insurance run with a two-out single off Seth Maness before the sixth would finally end two batters later with a Pence pop-out.
The rest of the way the Cardinals would threaten, but falling behind to the fifth best bullpen in the league is a lot harder to come back on than the terrible Dodgers pen.
In what has been seventh heaven for the Cardinals (H/T to every pun-lover on Twitter), the Redbirds did at least mount a threat. Jon Jay reached on a two-out walk chasing Jeremy Affeldt. Matt Holliday roped his third hard hit ball of the game past Crawford and Sandoval for a single. Bochy made his second pitching change of the inning and it paid off as Javier Lopez was able to neutralize the threat by getting Adams to hit into the shift.
The Cardinals went down easily the rest of the way save an Oscar Taveras pinch hit single in the eighth and a Jon Jay single in the ninth. The Jay single is somewhat of note because Giants closer Santiago Casilla had not given up a hit in 35 days. Casilla did not appear rattled by this piece of trivia as he promptly retired Holliday looking with a backdoor two-seamer painted on the outside corner.
The loss hits Cardinal Nation especially hard because during the top of the third the Budweiser was no doubt flying from bottles as Cardinals fans wildly celebrated a 4-1 lead.
In the top of the first Matt Carpenter hustled out a double to help erase the bad feelings of the night before. Jay worked a walk. Adams then delivered the rarest of sights, a first inning run, with a single through the left side. The totally left-handed manufactured run would be all they would get in the inning as Jhonny Peralta would ground into a double play.
In the bottom of the first, Blanco led off the inning with a shot to right-center field. Jay admittedly had a long way to run, but he was there, with two hands, and the ball still glanced off his glove for a
“double.” Panik singled, and Posey drove in Blanco with a sac fly. To get out of the inning, Kolten Wong made the most athletic turn in the history of Cardinals baseball unless there’s a highlight of Ozzie doing a backflip while turning a 4-6-3 I haven’t seen yet.
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Pretty DP by Wong https://t.co/objBBEFxwX
Wong then continued his domination of the Giants with a double to dead center just off the end of Blanco’s outstretched glove. AJ Pierzynski drove him in to take the lead back at 2-1 (but that wasn’t the internet’s favorite play from Pierzynski tonight.)
The Cardinals expanded their lead in the third. Holliday laced a double into the right field corner, was moved to third on an Adams single and scored on the second GIDP for Peralta on the day. Wong followed with a demolished home run to right to make it 4-1.
Running a pitcher with 1.19 postseason ERA in the third inning might make a team feel good about themselves and relax.
Shelby Miller relaxed to the tune of a 30-pitch bottom of the third, in which he gave up two runs and the Giants cut the lead to 4-3. Miller would end up finishing with 3.2 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 2 BB, 3 SO.
Wong and Jay continue to tear the cover off the ball, douse it in lighter fluid and set it on fire. All five of Wong’s hits in the series are for extra bases including two doubles, a triple and two home runs. Jay meanwhile hit an absurd .545 coming into tonight with a .583 OBP. He added a single and reached twice on walks to that count.
Meanwhile the Cardinals big boppers had been held relatively silent. Peralta and Holliday were a combined 3-22 coming into Game 4. Holliday broke out of the slump while Peralta plunged deeper into the depths of a cavernous baseball sinkhole. Sandwiched between a weak pop out and a backwards K, Holliday punished three baseballs for a double and two singles. Peralta, on the other hand, went 0-4 while grounding into two double plays and striking out once.
Unfortunately, Cardinals fans don’t have much hope going forward.
Matheny pitched 5 relievers, including normal late inning guys Randy Choate and Carlos Martinez in the fourth and fifth. He did this because he knows that was a must win for the Cardinals.
A month ago, Cardinals fans would be happy to have Adam Wainwright going in an elimination game, but now….
Madison Bumgarner thoroughly outpitched Waino in the Giants’ 3-0 Game 1 win. This postseason Bumgarner has given up two earned runs in 23.2 IP, while Wainwright has given up 8 ER in just 9 IP. He says he has figured out the mechanics issue and his elbow is fine, and, hopefully, he is right.
The last time these two teams were in the NLCS, going into Game 5 the Cards were up 3-1 on the Giants. Maybe the Cards can flip that script too.
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Photo Credit: Featured-Thearon W. Henderson/ Getty Images ; GIF: CJ Fogler
