<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1shMuf_0v150B7U00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1shMuf_0v150B7U00" width="1600" height="900" ><figcaption>Los Angeles Dodgers' Kevin Kiermaier (93) reacts after advancing to second on a throwing error form St. Louis Cardinals right fielder Jordan Walker (not shown) during the first inning of a baseball game Friday, Aug. 16, 2024, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Le) (Jeff Le | AP)</figcaption></figure>ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - The Cardinals had a day to regroup Thursday after being swept out of Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. The Reds had outplayed St. Louis handily in straight sets, pulling the Cardinals down into the muck, below a .500 record for the first time since mid-June.As they traveled back to St. Louis, the Cardinals had to recognize there would be no way around their current predicament⁠—an 8.5-game gap between themselves and the nearest playoff spot, with the next 19 games on the schedule coming exclusively against playoff teams.No way around it—to get where they want and expect to go, they’d have to wade straight through it.On the heels of that forgettable series at a hitters’ paradise in which the St. Louis offense tallied a combined four runs in three games, the Cardinal bats punched back against a far more formidable foe on Friday night at Busch Stadium. The Los Angeles Dodgers lineup, though, proved too great an obstacle as the Cardinals dropped their fifth straight game, falling 7-6 in the opener of the weekend series.Cardinals manager Oli Marmol stacked his lineup with as many right-handed bats as he could find, deploying the recently recalled Jordan Walker along with six other righties in the St. Louis batting order. Brendan Donovan and Victor Scott II served as the only left-handed hitting starters for the Cardinals, who sought to maximize against LA’s left-handed starter Justin Wrobleski.The strategy was effective. The Cards’ righties teed off on Wrobleski, with Paul Goldschmidt, Masyn Winn and Pedro Pagés launching homers to stake out a St. Louis lead, even after the top of the second inning proved the ways in which baseball is a game of inches.Victor Scott II had a home run robbery of Gavin Lux in his sights in dead center field⁠—in fact, he had it in the palm of his glove⁠—before the violence of the collision with the wall knocked it loose to give Los Angeles an early lead.<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">This kid is going to take away a lot of homers in his big-league career. This just wasn't quite one of them. <a href="https://t.co/EPPTjCgJzl">pic.twitter.com/EPPTjCgJzl</a>— Brenden Schaeffer🎳 (@bschaeffer12) <a href="https://twitter.com/bschaeffer12/status/1824605245294411868?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 17, 2024</a><input type="image" src="empty.gif" style="opacity:0" onerror="s=document.createElement(&quot;script&quot;);s.src=&quot;https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js&quot;;document.body.appendChild(s);"></blockquote>Kevin Kiermaier knocked a base hit to right which put the wheels in motion for a play at the plate. Jordan Walker put the throw on line toward Pagés at the dish, but the short hop caught Pagés off guard⁠—too hot to handle, with the ball skidding away as the second run crossed in the inning. Walker was charged with an error as the batsman advanced to second on the throw.The ensuing home run barrage by St. Louis over the subsequent few innings gave Miles Mikolas a 4-2 lead with which to work, but his night fell off the rails as a result of contact⁠—both hard and soft⁠—that led to his exit after 5.2 innings pitched.Mookie Betts led off the top of the sixth with a solo home run to make it a 4-3 score before tough luck ran amok for Mikolas.A two-out rally began innocently enough as Lux poked a soft ground ball that narrowly evaded the reach of both Mikolas and Winn to trickle into center field. The next slow roller found Winn’s glove but he couldn’t do much with the ball after fielding it, setting up another Dodgers’ threat.“Couple feet to the left and we’re talking about a groundball to short and it’s an out,” Marmol said. “So, yeah, it’s unfortunate.”With Mikolas at the 100-pitch plateau, Marmol looked to lean on his bullpen for the pesky last out of the sixth.“He was throwing the ball well,” Marmol said of his veteran starter. “If you’re just reading the game, you know what’s coming out of his hand, you’re liking the way it’s moving and what he’s able to do with the ball. He’s kind of freezing guys on the corners and not giving in a whole lot, so you trust him to get one more out there, not knowing what it’s going to look like if you go to the ‘pen. So you give him every opportunity to get out of that. After the two base hits, at that point, you’ve got to go get him.”Miguel Rojas singled off Andrew Kittredge to tie the game before Kevin Kiermaier delivered the dagger, a three-run homer on a Kittredge slider that found every bit of the middle of the plate. A bad time for a bad pitch, but Kittredge made one to sap the stadium of its energy.Energy is a quality that could be running low inside the Cardinal bullpen at this point in the year, another contributing factor to Marmol’s decision to stick with Mikolas as long as he felt that he could in the sixth. Acknowledging that the bullpen arms will continue to take the ball when called upon, Marmol acknowledged the strain that has been placed on the unit over the course of a season that has demanded a lot from the St. Louis relievers.“Healthy, yes. But effective⁠—I mean, guys have pitched a lot,” Marmol said of his bullpen after the loss. “If you look at some of the guys over the last 30 days, some of them have done a nice job, some of them could’ve used⁠—not one-plus innings.“I felt good about the ways Miles was throwing the baseball. If not, I wouldn’t have given him Smith there.”The Cardinals showed grit in battling back for an immediate response after the five-run Dodgers’ sixth, plating a pair of runs in the bottom of the sixth on RBI singles by Donovan and Pagés to pull the Cardinals within a run.“A lot more competitive at-bats,” Marmol said of the lineup Friday, which hit three homers and went 2-for-5 with RISP. “I liked our approach today. I thought it was beyond competitive... I thought we competed well. It’s just, one inning blows up on you.”St. Louis couldn’t find the game-tying tally down the stretch as the Cardinals went hitless over the final three innings with only a pair of walks to serve as potential kindling for a rally.In the midst of a grueling schedule and the standings turning upside down on the Cardinals, the only way out of the muck is through it.“Rather not wait ‘til we have to win 17 in a row,” Mikolas said in a reference to the 2021 Cardinals salvaging their season with a miraculous run through that September. “I don’t know how often that happens⁠—I don’t think, maybe, that often.”Instead of starting the journey with a signature win on Friday, the Cardinals sunk a little deeper.</div></body>

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Cardinals miss out on an uplifting win, fall to Dodgers for fifth straight loss

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) - The Cardinals had a day to regroup Thursday after being swept out of Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati. The Reds had outplayed St. Louis handily in straight sets, pulling the Cardinals down into the muck, below a .500 record for the first time since mid-June.

Cardinals miss out on an uplifting win, fall to Dodgers for fifth straight loss

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