Stretched thin by the Cardinals’ close games and their inability Saturday to generate much offense without the help of the Colorado Rockies, a resilient bullpen finally snapped.
Welcomed back into the game by a bases-clearing error by the Rockies, the Cardinals could not hold a slim lead for even an inning as Colorado seized on regularly used right-hander Andrew Kittredge for three runs in the top of the seventh. Ezequiel Tovar’s second homer of the game lifted the Rockies to a 6-5 victory at Busch Stadium.
Tovar finished the game with a career-high four hits and a career-high four RBIs to go with his two home runs and the decisive swing.
The Cardinals had just taken a one-run lead in the bottom of the sixth with four unearned runs when Kittredge entered for his usual assignment. One of the National League’s top setup men and leaders for holds, Kittredge (0-3) has been part of the Cardinals’ three-man, late-inning recipe for closing out leads, day after day after day. The top of the Rockies’ order gave him trouble. A one-out double followed by a single and a couple of steals seeded the bases for Tovar.
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He drilled a 385-foot homer on an 0-2 pitch for a two-run shot and his second homer in consecutive at-bats.
The Cardinals got the tying run to second in the ninth before Rockies right-hander Tyler Kinley secured his second save of the series.
The lead Kittredge had to hold was conjured out of Colorado errors not sustained offense from the Cardinals. They struggled to do much of anything against Ryan Feltner, the Rockies’ right-hander who entered the game with an ERA approaching 6.50 and riding one of the worst stretches by a starter this season. He held the Cardinals to one hit through five innings.
Kyle Gibson tiptoed around eight hits allowed, multiple stolen bases, and two errors by his teammates to keep Colorado within reach. The veteran right-hander completed another quality start with three runs allowed through six innings.
He struck out seven, including all three he faced in the fourth inning, and coaxed two double plays.
With one of the smallest summer weekend crowds ever at Busch Stadium, there were fewer than usual there to see the Cardinals on the brink of losing another home series to a last-place team. The White Sox came to Busch Stadium earlier this season and won two of the three, and the Rockies can, with a win Sunday, take the four-game series.
Bases-clearing error spurs Cardinals
The Cardinals had zilch going offensively until they got a helping hand from the Rockies.
The gifts started with a leadoff walk.
The game-changing errors followed.
In the sixth inning of a game Feltner had otherwise controlled, his hold on it loosened ever so slightly by walking Matt Carpenter. Teammates lost the grip entirely. A fielding error by second baseman Alan Trejo cost the Rockies a sure out at second base and perhaps a double play. That mistake loaded the bases for Paul Goldschmidt. An error by first baseman Elehuris Montero unloaded them.
Goldschmidt hit a bounding grounder to Montero, the former Cardinal prospect who was a part of the Nolan Arenado trade. Montero tried to follow his momentum with a throw to second for the forceout. His throw was wide of the base. Its momentum carried all the way to the foul-territory wall past left field. Alec Burleson, who hit the grounder Trejo botched, scored all the way first base to tie the game, 3-3.
The Cardinals went from zero runs against Feltner in 5 1/3 innings to three runs on one throw by a Rockies’ infielder.
By the time Arenado came up with Goldschmidt in scoring position and put the Cardinals ahead, Feltner had yielded the mound to a teammate. Arenado stung a single to left field to cap a four-run inning with a 4-3 lead. All four runs were unearned.
Carpenter vaults ahead of Holliday
A return to the Cardinals this season has given Carpenter a crack at climbing the career rankings and move ahead of some friends, some teammates, and some club Hall of Famers.
He did a bit of both with his homer in the seventh.
Carpenter’s second homer of the season was the 157th of his career as a Cardinal, and that moved him ahead of Matt Holliday during the Bill DeWitt Jr. ownership era. He also is now alone in 12th all time. The run Carpenter scored eclipsed Pepper Martin’s 756 as a Cardinal, so Carpenter is now 16th all time in scoring for the club, and the extra-base hit meant that Carpenter has more as a Cardinal than Jim Edmonds.
Cardinals vexed by mile-high ERA
Feltner arrived in ºüÀêÊÓƵ for his eighth road start of the season with the highest ERA of any starter in the majors who had enough innings to qualify for such a thing.
His 6.22 ERA through 63 2/3 innings including a recent run of duds.
In three of his previous four starts, the right-handed had allowed at least five runs, and in his previous start – against Cincinnati – Feltner allowed a season-worst eight runs on10 hits. Opponents have scored five runs or more against him in nearly half of his starts this season, but the Cardinals had troubles getting a hit let alone any runs against Feltner through five innings.
The Colorado right-hander struck out five of the first nine Cardinals he faced. Through three innings, he retired all nine batters, and by the end of the fifth he had faced only one more than the minimum. A groundball single in the fourth by Goldschmidt broke up Feltner’s perfect run only to watch him start another one. The start the fourth inning, Feltner had slashed his ERA down to 5.94. With the help of the Cardinals and errors by his teammates, Feltner’s 5 1/3 innings did not include an earned run and cleaved a ½ run off his ERA.
Feltner confounded the Cardinals throughout those first few five innings. In the second, he elevated a 96-mph fastball to strike out Brendan Donovan on three pitches. During the mess in the sixth inning that cost him the lead, Feltner nearly found a way out of it with a three-pitch strikeout of leadoff hitter Masyn Winn.
The seven strikeouts from the Cardinals were the third-most in a Feltner start.
More errors hound Cardinals
Before benefiting from the errors, the Cardinals committed a couple to grease Rockies’ offense.
In the first inning, Rockies center fielder Brenton Doyle drew a walk, and on the decisive pitch, leadoff hitter Charlie Blackmon took off for second. Despite the walk forcing Blackmon to second and ruling out any chance of a steal, catcher Ivan Herrera threw down to second – and too high. The unforced error allowed Blackmon to reach third and base, and that made it ease for him to score on Tovar’s single for a quick 1-0 lead.
Gibson pitched around Nolan Gorman’s throwing error in the third inning by getting a series of infield outs, including an inning-ending double play that Gorman pivoted at second.
In five of their past seven games, the Cardinals have committed at least two errors.
And those don’t count all the misplays or mistakes that led to the Rockies taking an extra 90 feet here or there against the Cardinals. In the seventh – as the Rockies overtook the Cardinals’ lead – Blackmon and Doyle each stole a base against Herrera to get the go-ahead run in scoring position.
With Tovar at the plate, turns out they already were.