Cardinals losing streak reaches three

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3. 33. 5. 127. Final

It isn’t very often that we’ve written about a three-game losing streak here at Redbird Rants.

That’s the hallmark of a solid baseball team. When your losing streaks don’t often go past two games, that’s good.

That makes what happened Thursday disappointing. For the second time in three nights, extra innings did in the St. Louis Cardinals as the San Diego Padres won, 5-3, in 11 innings at Busch Stadium.

You have to go back to May 21-23 to find the last time the Cardinals dropped three in a row.

St. Louis dropped to a still-robust 51-27, but its lead over the red-hot Pittsburgh Pirates dropped to six games. The Pirates just finished a three-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers Thursday afternoon.

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Tim Cooney, tapped as an emergency starter for the injured Jaime Garcia (groin), was somewhat effective for six innings. Cooney struck out six and walked two in his start, but he gave up two home runs.

The top four hitters in the Cardinals lineup accounted for seven of the nine hits. That’s not a good trend, because the lineup should have some threats all throughout.

Yadier Molina started the scoring with an RBI grounder in the first inning, but the Padres’ Yangervis Solarte homered in the second to tie the score at 1-1. An RBI single by Austin Hedges and a homer by pitcher Tyson Ross put the Padres up 3-1 in the fifth inning.

An RBI single by Matt Carpenter and a double by Jason Heyward tied things up at 3-3 in the fifth. It stayed that way until the top of the 11th, when Will Venable‘s two-run homer off reliever Carlos Villanueva ended the scoring.

Up next

Michael Wacha will try and get the Cardinals back on track when he takes on San Diego pitcher Andrew Cashner in an 8:15 p.m. start.