On Monday, June 23, the red-hot St. Louis Cardinals hosted the Chicago Cubs in the first of a four-game series, winning in a decisive 8-2 victory with the help of four lefty homeruns and excellent starting pitching.
The Cardinals entered play today with a record of 42-36 and 4.5 gb while looking for their third straight series win and to cover ground from the surging Milwaukee Brewers and 1st place rival Chicago Cubs in the NL Central standings. The Cubs came into the series bullpen weary from a handful of football score games in a series loss to Seattle over the weekend, but their homerun power encouraged Cardinal pitching to keep the ball down in the zone on a hot night in St. Louis.
Southpaw starting pitcher Matthew Liberatore (5-6, 3.96) put on a show for an electric Busch Stadium by shutting down a threatening Cubs lineup by economically attacking Chicago hitters for 7.0 innings with only 85 pitches. He earned only two runs on 6 hits with 5 punchouts and yielded an elusive walk. But the key moment for Liberatore was executing quality pitches under pressure in the top 5th, where the Cubs worked a bases loaded jam with only one out. Liberatore tossed a strategic backdoor cutter, jamming Chicago left-fielder Ian Happ, historically a Cardinal killer, who rolled a tailor made 5-4-3 double play to escape the 5th nearly unscathed.
“Yeah, that was huge. Dusty (Blake) came out and told me I could throw a heater up, or I could spin him under, so I told him I wanted to throw a cutter,” Liberatore laughed in the post-game interview. “Tried to go in, threw a backdoor cutter, and luckily, he just rolled over… That was the turning point.”
Paraphrasing Cardinals analyst Ricky Horton after the game, you show me a team on a hot streak, and I’ll show you a team with a quality starting rotation. Liberatore’s great pitching set the table for the Cardinal line-up to solve Chicago’s game 1 starter, Ben Brown, who appeared to be an enigma until the Cardinal’s 4th, where left-fielder Lars Nootbaar started the home-run train with a two-out bomb to left. The rest of the Cardinal’s runs came from the courtesy of three more homers from Alec Burleson, all-star contender Brendan Donovan, and Nolan Gorman, all lefty two-run bombs.
“It’s great.” Left fielder Lars Nootbaar said after the game. “Up and down the line-up we had good at-bats. Playing against the Cubs, you ramp it up a little bit, but to have everyone come out here and contribute is a good win.”
Great starting pitching and an explosive offense allowed for two back-end pitchers Riley O’Brien and Rodney Munoz to get some low-leverage work in with an inning apiece to send the Cardinal faithful home happy on a warm Monday night by a final score; 8-2, St. Louis.
“When you look at it, you want to control your own destiny sooner than later, and the only way to do that is one game at a time,” said Cardinal manager Oliver “Oli” Marmol. “We took the first one, we’ll focus on tomorrow and try to do the same.”
Cardinals attack the Cubbies for game 2 of the rivalry tomorrow at 6:45 PM CDT.
I'm a writer trying to make his mark in the baseball journalism world. I graduated with a journalism degree from Union University where I pitched four years of D2 baseball.
