Cardinals recap: Michael Wacha gets 11th win

A bit of the familiar combined with the new, but the end result was another win for the St. Louis Cardinals.

In the first game of the Stephen Piscotty era, it was the team’s ace pitcher that came through with a win as the Cardinals defeated the Chicago White Sox, 8-5, at Comiskey Park on Tuesday.

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St. Louis improved to 59-34 and took advantage of another Pittsburgh Pirates loss to move five games up in first place.

Michael Wacha earned his 11th win in 14 decisions as the Cardinals found some offense. St. Louis jumped out to a 7-0 lead through 3 1/2 innings, courtesy of RBI singles by Matt Carpenter and Yadier Molina and a grand slam by Matt Holliday.

How nice is it to have Holliday back in the lineup? His presence has galvanized the Cardinals in big wins over the New York Mets, and it certainly helped out again in this game. Holliday had two hits and drove in four runs as his batting average improved to .302 overall.

All eyes in the hitting lineup were on Piscotty, however, as he debuted in the ninth slot and went 1-for-4 with a run scored. Piscotty was called up to the parent club on Tuesday as outfielder Tommy Pham went back to Triple-A Memphis.

Wacha struck out eight in five innings of work, and Trevor Rosenthal later picked up his 28th save.

Carlos Rodon picked up the loss for the White Sox, as he dropped to 3-3 overall.

What’s up next

St. Louis is back in action at 8:10 p.m. Wednesday with Lance Lynn (7-5, 2.79) bringing his 111 strikeouts into action against White Sox hurler John Danks (5-8, 4.98).