St. Louis Cardinals Fall to Milwaukee Brewers

Close, but not quite.

An enthusiastic crowd gathered for the St. Louis Cardinals‘ home opener against the Milwaukee Brewers walked away disappointed as the Cards fell 5-4 on Monday at Busch Stadium.

The Cardinals dropped to 3-3 overall.

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Let’s take a look at the highs and lows of Monday’s home opener:

*Adam Wainwright had a respectable day on the mound as he gave up three earned runs and struck out four to drop his earned run average to 2.08 and his record to 1-1. He only gave up eight hits and a walk, so you can’t pin this loss on the veteran starter.

*So who gets the tag? Well, Kolten Wong didn’t exactly endear himself to the Busch faithful with his on-field performance. Wong came up with two costly throwing errors, which led to the two unearned runs. The bright side for Wong is he drew three walks and scored a run, and his average now stands at .278.

*The struggles of the Cardinals to get runners home remain a big issue. St. Louis stranded 23 runners on base during the game, including four left on base by Matt Adams, Jon Jay and Yadier Molina. The top part of the order is hitting for St. Louis, but why can’t any runs come home? That’s a big issue that needs to be addressed over time.

In short, it was a disappointing way to open the home part of the schedule, but there is plenty of baseball yet to be played and 80 more home games at Busch.

The teams have a day off on Tuesday before a Wednesday night game, where Lance Lynn will take the hill.