JJ Wetherholt's debut bomb fuels a Cardinals opening day victory

The new-look Cardinals have introduced themselves with a roaring victory over the Tampa Bay Rays on opening day, 9-7. 

A National Holiday: Opening Day in The Lou

Baseball in St. Louis debuts with Clydesdales, trophies, legends, and a parade of team/national Hall of Famers while fans look on in awe at what Cardinal baseball has accomplished. 

The first tally of the Cardinals' 2026 season couldn’t have come more poetically. Top prospect JJ Wetherholt got the scoring started with a 0-2 bomb to dead center field in his second at-bat. Wetherholt’s blast traveled an estimated 425ft and earned him the first curtain call of what Cardinal fans hope will be a red jacket career. 

St. Louis got gut-punched after that as Tampa Bay tallied six runs in the sixth inning after Matthew Liberatore exited the game. Libby’s final line ended at five innings, one earned run, two walks, and two strikeouts, a solid opener for the first-time "ace." It’s worth mentioning that his start was elevated by the left-field heroics of Nathan Church, who went skyfishing for a ball destined for the bullpen to pull it back, robbing the Rays of a home run right before Jonathan Aranda blasted one of his own, the only blemish on Liberatore’s day. 

Matt Svanson, Justin Bruihl, and Chris Roycroft combined to allow six runs in a cumulative one inning of work. After the bullpen’s struggles sucked the air out of a lively Busch Stadium, the Redbird offense got red hot, notching an eight-run sixth inning in response to the Rays' offensive outburst. 

The sixth inning was highlighted by a mammoth two-run homer by Alec Burleson off of Rays star reliever Griffin Jax, who was in uniform for Team USA at this year's World Baseball Classic. Burleson turned and burned on a 99mph fastball and unleashed 432 happy feet into the right field bleachers. 

JoJo Romero got the call in the seventh and tallied 0.2 innings of work before manager Oliver Marmol played the matchup card against young superstar Junior Caminero. Right-hander Riley O’Brien trotted out of the pen to relieve Romero and strutted his 99mph sinker en route to 1.1 innings of shutdown baseball. 

The ninth saw veteran reliever and St. Louis native Ryne Stanek make his Cardinals debut while also racking up his first save. It didn’t come without chaos, as the "Cardiac Cards" always seem to find a way to dangle their wins over a ledge. Stanek walked the bases loaded and ended the game with a mystifying splitter that fooled former Redbird Richie Palacios and sealed the deal on 2026’s first Redbird winner. 

The Cardinals offense did something they’ve struggled to do for a few years now: They battled. St. Louis had Tampa Bay Rays starter Drew Rasmussen at 20+ pitches in just the first inning. The Cardinals aren’t going to slug like the Yankees or the Dodgers, but what they can do is kill you with a thousand tiny cuts. Alec Burleson, Nathan Church, and Victor Scott II all had three-hit games. The only starter to leave today without their first hit was Ivan Herrera, who still found ways to contribute, via a sacrifice fly in St. Louis’ big sixth inning. 

In a postgame interview with Jim Hayes, rookie sensation JJ Wetherholt emphasized that the Cardinals want to play “team baseball” this year, and even when they fell behind 7-1, they weren’t out of that ballgame. 

Whether it was the first hit of many for a budding superstar, a two-strike bomb off of one of the game’s best relievers, Spider-Man tactics at the wall to rob a homerun, a flurry of hits from the entirety of the lineup, or the closer knotting the save and roaring as he comes off the mound, 2026 opening day had a little bit of everything.