How would the St. Louis Cardinals respond to two of the most disappointing games of the year? Tuesday night in Anaheim, it was Matthew Liberatore on the mound for the Cardinals and the game started like the Angels were reading his mind.
To say that the game started off poorly for St. Louis would be a massive understatement. Problem number one was the Cardinals top of the 1st when Iván Herrera and Alec Burleson reached base with one-out singles only to be stranded when Jordan Walker flew out to right and Lars Nootbaar struck out. Bummer part one.
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The bottom of the 1st inning would see the LA Angels jump all over Cardinals starter Matthew Liberatore as if they had foreknowledge of every pitch he was throwing. Neto led off with a single followed by Mike Trout who did the same. Matthew then helped the Angels by walking Schanuel to load the bases. Jorge Soler doubled to left scoring Neto and Trout giving the Angels an immediate 2-0 lead. They were just getting started. Grissom then singled to right scoring Schanuel making it 3-0 Los Angeles. Jo Adell then punished a 79 mph Liberatore curveball launching it 405 feet giving the Angels a 1st inning 5-0 lead.
If you didn’t see the game broadcast, let me catch you up. The St. Louis Cardinals TV team muted the start of the bottom of the 3rd inning to show Jordan Walker reacting to his historic Home Run Derby performance last week. I’m very proud of what Jordan achieved and he needs to be celebrated, but it was a surreal moment having a baseball game play-by-play muted for something that happened 8 days ago. Some theorized that the audience would prefer to watch Walker’s home run heroics instead of what was happening in Angel Stadium and that might be accurate.
To Matthew Liberatore’s credit, he pulled it together after the shelling the Angels gave him in the bottom of the 1st inning. He limited the damage by keeping the Angels from adding to their lead through the middle innings. The problem is the St. Louis Cardinals offense was relatively silent until the top of the 5th inning. After Nathan Church flied out to lead off the Cardinals 5th, Blaze Jordan reached on an infield single and then advanced to third on a single by Bryan Torres. JJ Wetherholt grounded into a fielder’s choice, but Jordan scored on the play as JJ beat the throw to first giving St. Louis a badly-needed run cutting the Angels lead to 5-1.
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To give you an idea of how bizarre the current stretch is for the Cardinals, Iván Herrera waved off the first pitch from Matthew Liberatore in the bottom of the 6th inning when he saw the scoreboard in right field make sudden changes which were distracting so he and manager Oli Marmol appealed to the umpires to not count the first ball that Matthew tossed and they agreed. Liberatore was removed from the game with one out in the bottom of the 6th after throwing 95 pitches. This will not be referred to as a good outing, but Matthew was able to eat some innings after the first 6 batters he face got hits off of him. Matt Svanson came in to try and keep the Angels where they were and he was successful for his part of the bottom of the 6th inning. Scott Blewett was the Cardinals solution for the bottom of the 7th and 8th innings. He also kept the Angels from adding to their lead.
Would the Cardinals find a way to light a fire and rally from 4 runs down in the final 3 innings? Well, José Fermín almost hit a home run before grounding out in the top of the 7th inning and JJ Wetherholt nearly had a single leading off the top of the 8th inning and that’s about it. I almost forgot that Jordan Walker kept his 12-game hitting streak alive when his ground ball hit third base and shot straight up in the air in the top of the 9th inning. Oh, and Chip Caray managed to share the entire biography of Adele in the late innings because we Cardinals fans haven’t suffered enough the past 3 days.
The St. Louis Cardinals will wrap up what has been a massively disappointing road trip as they take on the lowly Angels (who have won the first 2 games) in a Wednesday afternoon contest. The Cardinals will send Hunter Dobbins to the mound while the Angels are giving Reid Detmers the start. First pitch is scheduled for 3:07pm central time in Angel Stadium. TV broadcast will be available thru Cardinals.tv.
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