After taking two of three games from the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field, the St. Louis Cardinals headed home to Busch Stadium, to start another inter-league baseball series, this time against another American League Central team, the Detroit Tigers.
And Detroit took game one of the series with a major late-game scoring surge.
The pitching match-up for the evening featured Carlos Martinez (3-1, 4.89) for the Cardinals. and Shane Greene (3-2, 4.71) for the Tigers.
Martinez started the game with a strikeout, and with one out, faced Ian Kinsler, who hit a ground-out to Kolten Wong, who made an amazing play to get Kinsler out. Miguel Cabrera stepped up to bat with two outs, and grounded out to Carpenter, as Martinez had himself a 1-2-3 inning to start of the game.
Peter Bourjos led off the bottom of the first inning and hit a hard ground ball to Kinsler, resulting in the first out. Matt Carpenter then came up to bat, and hit a sharp one out double down the right field line, which brought up Matt Holliday. Unfortunately, Holliday lined right into a double play, as Kinsler caught it and threw it right to second base.
With one out in the top of the second, the Tigers got on the board with a solo home run by Yoenis Cespedes into the Tigers’ bullpen. Martinez responded with his second strikeout of the game, this time to Nick Castellanos. With two outs, Jose Iglesias grounded out, but the Tigers had the 1-0 lead as the Cardinals half of the inning began. Kolten Wong with two outs wound up getting hit by a pitch, and Yadier Molina followed that with a single.
That brought up Jason Heyward with two on and two out. Heyward then hit a bloop single off the glove of Greene, bringing up Martinez, who struck out to end the inning.
As for both Greene and Martinez, they pitched scoreless baseball throughout the third and fourth innings, despite runners getting on base. Heading into the fifth, Martinez already had seven strikeouts in the game, and nearly struck out the side in the bottom of the fourth.
In the top of the fifth, the Tigers tacked on their second run of the game, which was driven in by Kinsler, after a lead-off triple by Anthony Gose. As the game headed to the sixth inning, the score still remained 2-0 in favor of Detroit as St. Louis could not score in the fifth. During the sixth inning, both Martinez and Greene were removed by their respective managers: Matt Belisle entered for the Cardinals and Blaine Hardy entered for the Tigers.
Both relievers pitched shutout baseball during the duration of their appearance in the game. The game remained 2-0 until the top of the seventh inning, when Cardinals reliever Mitch Harris entered the game. A walk to Kinsler brought up Cabrera, who hit a two-run home run, which also was the 399th of his career, to give the Tigers a 4-0 lead. That was immediately followed with a home run by J.D. Martinez, to make it 5-0 Tigers. Meanwhile, in the bottom of the seventh, with Carpenter already on base, Jhonny Peralta hit a two run home run to cut Detroit’s lead to 5-2.
The following inning, with Miguel Socolovich pitching, Gose scored James McCann to give Detroit a 6-2 in the top of eighth. And in the bottom half of the inning, Tigers reliever Tom Gorzelanny threw a 3-2 pitch to Heyward (with Molina already on base) and Heyward shot it into the bleachers for a two run home run that cut the Cardinals deficit to 6-4. In a double switch for Detroit, Joba Chamberlain then came in to pitch for the Tigers.
But once the ninth inning arrived, the game got out of hand…and fast.
With two runners on and Seth Maness on the mound, Cespedes doubled to center, scoring both runners. McCann then scored Cespedes. And J.D. Martinez scored McCann.
St. Louis did not manage a comeback in the bottom of the ninth inning, and Detroit wound up winning 10-4. St. Louis dropped to 24-11 on the season, and Detroit improved to 22-14, although they still trail the Kansas City Royals in the division.
Tomorrow’s game will feature Tyler Lyons for the Cardinals and David Price for the Tigers pitching. Game time is 1:00 CT.
