The St. Louis Cardinals squared off against the San Francisco Giants in game two of a three games series on Saturday afternoon. On Friday night, the Giants snapped the Cardinals’ five game winning streak when Kelby Tomlinson hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth.
But on Saturday, it was all Cardinals from beginning to end.
St. Louis won their 83rd game, by shutting out San Francisco 6-0.
For the afternoon, the starters were Lance Lynn (10-8, 2.94 ERA), who entering the game never had beaten the Giants, and Ryan Vogelsong (9-9, 4.05). Both veteran pitchers did a great job of keeping their opponents in check throughout the duration of the first half of the ballgame, as it was a scoreless game until the top of the fifth inning.
It started when Brandon Moss led off with a triple, putting the Cardinals in a great position to score right out of the gate. Following a Lynn strikeout, Matt Carpenter singled, scoring Moss and giving the Cardinals a 1-0 lead. Stephen Piscotty followed with a single, as both him and Carpenter later advanced a base when Jhonny Peralta grounded out. Volgelsong then walked Jason Heyward to load the bases.
Afterwards, George Kontos was brought into the game to relieve Vogelsong, with Yadier Molina at the plate. Before the at-bat, each runner advanced on a wild pitch to make it 2-0 Cardinals. Molina then singled to score both Piscotty and Heyward.
Suddenly, St. Louis had themselves a 4-0 lead.
Meanwhile, Lynn kept shutting down the Giants, preventing them from gaining any momentum in the game. During the eighth inning, however, he felt pain in one of his ankles, and exited the game. Randy Choate and later Seth Maness entered the game, keeping the shutout intact as well.
St. Louis scored two more runs, first when Piscotty tripled to score Carpenter in the top of the ninth to make it 5-0, and Heyward hit an infield single which scored Piscotty to make it 6-0. Sam Tuivailala entered to pitch the bottom of the ninth, and shutout the Giants as the Cardinals won their 83rd game of the year, as they improve to 37 games over .500.
With the victory, Lynn also gets his first career win against the Giants.
On Sunday afternoon, Jaime Garcia will get the start on the mound.
(Photo by Jason O. Watson/Getty Images)
