The St. Louis Cardinals weren’t about to panic despite entering a three-game series against the host Miami Marlins riding a five-game losing streak.
A late-game surge lifted St. Louis to an 8-3 win at Miami on Monday, and the Cardinals will try to secure a series victory when the teams meet again on Tuesday.
“I liked offensively what we did today,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said postgame. “That was the key. We need to create more of an identity and consistency around that. When you look at the type of at-bats we took, we sprayed the ball all over the field. (Nolan Gorman did hit a ninth-inning) homer, but we took what the game was giving us, especially on the (five) walks.”
The result pulled the Cardinals within five games of the idle New York Mets for the final National League wild-card position.
The first four batters in the St. Louis starting lineup on Monday went a combined 8-for-17 with four RBIs. Cleanup hitter Willson Contreras, who returned from a four-game absence caused by a foot injury, finished 2-for-4 with an RBI.
“He’s a high-energy, emotional player,” Marmol said of Contreras. “We feed off his bat. You want him in there as much as possible.”
The Cardinals will try to maintain the momentum when they send right-hander Michael McGreevy (4-2, 4.41 ERA) on the mound on Tuesday.
McGreevy, a 25-year-old rookie who has never faced the Marlins, is 2-0 with a 3.50 ERA this month. St. Louis’ first-round pick in 2021 has pitched exactly six innings in each of his three August starts.
He will face off with a Miami squad that is not in a groove at the moment.
The Marlins have lost eight of their past 10 games, and they committed two errors on Monday that led to three unearned runs.
In addition, starter Eury Perez set a negative franchise record with four wild pitches in one game, and the Marlins also had some other miscues that could’ve been called errors but were not, including a foul pop near the plate that should have been caught.
“Not great,” Marlins manager Clayton McCullough said when asked about his team’s performance. “This was not a pretty brand of baseball.
“When the game was invented, this was not how it was drawn up. Ugly. We did not take care of the routine plays, and we deserved to lose.”
Miami was playing its first home game after a 3-8 road trip, but McCullough wasn’t buying that as a reason for sloppy baseball.
“No excuses,” he said. “Every team takes long road trips. We did not play up to the standard we have set for ourselves. We have to get over this quickly.”
Miami’s starter on Tuesday will be right-hander Edward Cabrera (6-6, 3.34 ERA), who is having a career year.
Cabrera has already made 21 starts — one more than his previous high. He has pitched a career-high 113 1/3 innings, and he needs one more win to match his best single-season total in that category.
Meanwhile, his walk rate of 3.0 per nine innings is a career low, his homer rate of 1.0 per nine innings is tied for a career best, and his ERA is on track to be the second-best figure of his five-year major league tenure.
Cabrera lost to the Cardinals despite pitching well on July 28. He permitted just two runs (one earned) on four hits in six innings, but the Marlins fell 7-1. That result left him 0-1 with a 1.64 ERA in two career starts vs. St. Louis.