Good, Bad and Ugly: Cardinals avoid getting swept by Brewers

The St Louis Cardinals did not look great against the NL Central leading Milwaukee Brewers, but looked great Thursday night as they avoided getting swept.

It wasn’t exactly what fans hoped for in anticipation of this week’s three game set against the Milwaukee Brewers. But the final game on Thursday definitely made things better.

The Cardinals were shut out Tuesday, 2-0 and then lost a heartbreaker, 6-4, on Wednesday and won, 8-4, on Thursday.

On Tuesday, the Brewers scoring began in the second inning with a double from Kolten Wong off Adam Wainwright to score Rowdy Tellez. Due to an error, Wong advances to third.

In the third Omar Navarez doubled to right field off Wainwright scoring Christian Yelich.

Wainwright pitched six innings giving up nine hits, in addition to the two runs and two walks. He was able to strike out four.  T.J. McFarland pitched one inning, giving up two hits but striking out two. Luis Garcia pitched one inning, giving up two hits but striking out one. Andrew Miller pitched one inning, giving up one hit.

Hopes were high Wednesday with Jack Flaherty on the mound.

Tyler O’Neill got the offense going in the first inning off Freddy Peralta. O’Neill singled to left to score Paul Goldschmidt. Lars Nootbaar singled to center to score O’Neill.

In the second, Goldschmidt doubled to right field to score Tommy Edman.

Willy Adames hit a homer off Flaherty in the fourth inning. Avisail Garcia hit a homer off Flaherty in the fifth inning. In the ninth, Garcia knocked his second home run of the game. The game tying homer came off Alex Reyes.

The game went into extra innings and Reyes kind of imploded. On a wild pitch by Reyes, Jackie Bradley scored. Christian Yelich singled to Edmundo Sosa, allowing Luis Urias to score. Yadier Molina was not pleased with this play and seemed to be grumbling as the umpires were reviewing the play. The replay didn’t go the Cardinals way, but it did allow Molina to cool. Jace Peterson singled to right field allowing Yelich to score. There was a fielding error of epic proportions from Nootbaar.

Molina did try to make things exciting in the home half of the tenth inning. Molina singled to center to score O’Neill. That was it though as the Cardinals could not muster any more offense.

We’re going to discuss Thursday’s game in The Good section. Simply because it was that good.