Cardinals Shutdown by San Diego Pitching

St. Louis dips back below .500

The new-look, post-trade deadline Cardinals headed west to Petco Park for a three-game series with the Padres and the results were…more or less the same.

St. Louis (55-56) dropped game one of its series with San Diego (61-49) by a score of 4-1.

Outside of one swing by Willson Contreras, the Cardinal offense didn’t come close to threatening Nick Pavetta. In fact, Pavetta took a perfect game bid into the fifth inning, but Contreras, mercifully, put an end to it with a rocket to left field. That would be the only blemish on Pavetta’s night, and he responded by retiring the next six batters he faced. Pavetta faced 22 St. Louis batters and responded 21.

Despite St. Louis’ struggles at the plate, Contreras’s home run gave the Cards a 1-0 lead thanks to Matthew Liberatore throwing four scoreless innings, and while he wasn’t flirting with perfection like Pavetta, San Diego was only able to get two hits off of him and it looked like he’d get the win in this pitcher’s duel.

Unfortunately, St. Louis gave up that lead in the bottom half of that very same fifth inning, thanks in large part to some shoddy defense at the corners.

Jake Cronenworth drew a one-out walk and one batter later was able to score all the way from first thanks to throwing errors by Nolan Gorman (playing third in place of Nolan Arenado, who just landed on the IL today) and Contreras. Jose Iglesias reached first because of an errant throw by Gorman, which opened the door for Cronenworth to try and take an extra 90 feet and move to third. Not only did he get to third, he scored on the play because of an airmailed throw by Contreras back across the diamond.

That’s when the bottom gave out for Liberatore, who then allowed the next three San Diego batters to reach base. Elias Díaz singled to score Iglesias and give San Diego a 2-1 lead; then Liberatore walked Fernando Tatis Jr., gave up a single to Luis Arraez to load the bases, and that’s when he hit the end of the line.

Matt Svanson was the first one out of this new-look St. Louis bullpen, and while he struck out Manny Machado for the second out of the inning, he gave up the back breaker: a two- run single to Jackson Merrill that gave San Diego the 4-1 advantage that they would ride the rest of the way home.

Working with a 4-1 lead, Pavetta easily dispatched of St. Louis batters in the sixth and seventh inning and handed the ball to San Diego’s prized trade deadline acquisition: Mason Miller.

San Diego moved heaven and earth to acquire Miller and ironically he gave up hits to the first two batters he faced as a San Diego Padre: a single to Masyn Winn, another single to Gorman that allowed Winn to move to third base, and somehow someway, St. Louis was able to bring the tying run to the plate.

Then Miller was…well, Miller. He got Jordan Walker to chase an eye-level 103 MPH four seam fastball, and then got Yohel Pozo to hit into an inning-ending double play.

San Diego might have the best bullpen in the game, and Miller handed the ball to Robert Suarez in the ninth inning. You know, San Diego’s other dominant end of game arm. Suarez gave up a leadoff single to Victor Scott II but erased that quickly with a strikeout of Brendan Donovan and got Iván Herrera to hit into a game-ending double play.

St. Louis will try to get back to .500 tomorrow night when Michael McGreevy faces Randy Vasquez.