ST. LOUIS – Before Nolan Arenado would ever come to the plate in the bottom of the ninth and produce his 13th career walk-off RBI, which would cap a stirring Cardinals victory filled with at least a dozen pivotal moments, manager Oliver Marmol had one question for the high-profile pinch-hitter.
“In the ninth, I asked [Arenado] if he wanted to end the game,” Marmol recalled following the Cardinals' 2-1 defeat of the Dodgers before a noisy crowd of 37,465 at Busch Stadium. “He said, ‘Yes,’ and he did.”
Arenado’s pinch-hit fly ball to left that scored pinch-runner Jose Barrero was one of many momentum-turning moments in a victory that secured another impressive series win for the surging Cards. Thought to be in a rebuilding year that focused on development, the Cardinals have instead tied a season-best by getting to eight games over .500 (36-28) with their 19th victory against teams with a winning record. Already, the Cards have won series against perennial playoff powers in the Phillies (twice), Dodgers, Mets, Astros, Brewers, D-backs and Twins.
“That says the same thing I’ve been saying since Spring Training: We’ve got a really good team and a lot of people who are doubting us are going to be surprised,” said Nolan Gorman, who started the ninth-inning rally with a Statcast-measured 111.6 mph double for his hardest-hit ball of the season. “We’ve said it for a while now: We’ve got a really good team and there’s a special bond in this clubhouse.”
While Arenado’s pinch-hit single ended the game, it wasn’t even the most thrilling moment of the day for a Cards club that came within an out of shutting out the Dodgers for a second straight game. That honor belonged to electrifying shortstop Masyn Winn, who broke a scoreless tie in the bottom of the eighth inning by scoring from second base on an infield hit that ricocheted off Dodgers pitcher Ben Casparius. After taking a sizable lead off second, Winn never broke stride while rounding third and he used a headfirst slide to get in ahead of Freddie Freeman’s throw home.
“I was just really kind of reading [the Casparius] throw [to first], and when he first threw it, I saw it going left and I thought it was going to right field,” said Winn, who had two hits for his 16th multihit game of the season. “I didn’t expect Freddie to get it, but at that point, I was too far off the base and I had to keep going. Luckily, I got in there safe.”
The Cardinals won 5-0 on Friday night when staff ace Sonny Gray and relievers JoJo Romero, Phil Maton and Steven Matz blanked the Dodgers. L.A. was just 1 for 13 with runners in scoring position in the series opener 0 for 12 on Saturday against starter Erick Fedde and relievers Kyle Leahy, Ryan Helsley and Matz. The Dodgers' lone run on Saturday came after a Shohei Ohtani slow roller hit the second-base bag for a hit and he later scored on a Helsley slider in the dirt.
Fedde matched Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitch for pitch by shutting out the Dodgers over 5 1/3 innings. Fedde got Will Smith to fly out to end the third after Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freeman had reached to load the bases. Two innings later, Fedde retired that trio of former MVPs to strand Hyeseong Kim at third base.
In the sixth, Fedde allowed the first two to reach before striking out Andy Pages looking on a 3-2 pitch. Matz relieved and struck out Kiké Hernández and got former Cardinal Tommy Edman to fly out. In the seventh, Matz got his glove hand up to deflect a Betts liner off his forearm. He stayed in the game, and then got Freeman to hit in an inning-ending double play.
“That’s a tough lineup where you can’t really take your foot off the gas, but they were getting my A stuff,” Fedde said, who pitched around four hits and four walks. “I was able to get some big outs when I needed them and Matz picked me up huge. The whole bullpen did a great job, and all the guys brought their A game today.”
Fedde said the ability to gut out a gritty victory over the defending World Series champs says something about the legitimacy and staying power of the Cardinals.
“It just proves how good we really are,” Fedde said. “No matter who you’re playing, you’ve got to take care of business. But we’re a ballclub that feels that we don’t have to back down from anybody and we believe in our stuff. It shows in the quality of baseball that we’re playing.”