The Cardinals just needed to hold the line for a little while longer until they could beg, borrow or steal another couple of runs. They’d seemingly been playing nail-biter games for the past month. After all, 15 of their previous 25 games had been decided by a margin of two runs or fewer.
Those sorts of white-knuckle affairs had become the norm as of late. Things were following a similar script going into the fifth inning on Saturday afternoon.
However, the Cardinals couldn’t hold the line. Instead of taking it down to the final out locked in a staring contest and trying to make the other side blink first, the Cardinals slipped up and watched the Cincinnati Reds put up a six-run inning — much of it at the expense of Cardinals ace pitcher Sonny Gray.
The fifth inning put the game out of reach and set the Cardinals on the path to a 9-4 loss to the Reds in front of an announced crowd of 39,164 at Busch Stadium.
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One night after pitcher Andre Pallante spearheaded the Cardinals pitching staff’s efforts in collecting their fourth shutout of the season in a 1-0 win, the Reds chased Gray from the game before the end of the fifth inning.
“They made me work,†Gray said. “I haven’t looked at it, but I don’t feel like I was getting ahead as much as I would have liked, you know 0-1, 0-2, 1-2. I didn’t feel like I was in a ton of those counts. They worked deep at-bats, took some good swings, spoiled a lot of pitches with some foul balls and kind of put the ball in play.â€
Gray threw 92 pitches to get through 4 1/3 innings. He allowed six runs (three earned runs) on seven hits, including four extra-base hits, and one walk. Gray (9-5) also struck out five.
Gray, who pitched for the Reds from 2019-2021, entered the day coming off arguably his best three-start stretch of the season.
Gray allowed four runs on 10 hits and just three walks in his previous three starts (21 2/3 innings). He struck out 21 batters during that stretch, held opposing hitters to a .139 batting average and posted a 1.66 ERA. He pitched at least seven innings in each of those three outings.
On Saturday against the Reds, Gray felt like he didn’t necessarily get rewarded even when he’d “beat†batters by making the pitch he wanted.
The Reds (39-44) scored two runs on a string of three consecutive doubles in the third inning.
Catcher Austin Wynns started the frame with a double down the line to the opposite field that went into the right field corner on a sinker Gray left up in the zone but on the inner half of the plate.
Then Jonathan India, the Reds’ leadoff hitter, worked the count from 1-2 to 3-2 and hooked a cutter away and pulled it down the left field line for a double that bounced over the side wall and into the stands. India became the first player in Reds history to double in seven consecutive games. Wynns scored the game’s first run on India’s double.
Then Reds dynamic shortstop Elly De La Cruz hit a 3-2 sweeper on the outer half of the plate the opposite way for an RBI double.
The Cardinals (42-40) cut the two-run deficit in half in the bottom of the third after Matt Carpenter (2 for 4) doubled and scored on a Michael Siani RBI single.
The score stayed 2-1 going into the fifth inning.
Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado (2 for 4) made an outstanding play, reading the hop perfectly while on the move to his left, and threw out India to start the fifth inning.
Then De La Cruz tripled on the first pitch of the next at-bat — a down and in cutter — on a ball lined into the right field corner.
The next batter, Reds slugger Spencer Steer, walked on five pitches. After Steer stole second base to stay out of the double play possibility, Jake Fraley fouled off four 3-2 pitches before Gray hit Fraley with a pitch.
Gray’s sinker that veered up and in and hit Fraley marked his 88th pitch of the game.
Gray threw four more pitches, and he got Noelvi Marte to hit a grounder to third base.
“You’re trying to make close pitches early,†Gray said of the Steer walk. “That’s kind of like an unintentional intentional kind of walk there to get to Fraley. Then (Fraley) just put together a really, really, really good at-bat. I made like pitch after pitch after pitch, then tried to bring one back and it stayed in there and hit him — which wasn’t the end of the world, knowing you had Marte coming up.
“I just wanted to attack (Marte), so I attacked him with fastballs. I was wanting to force contact on the ground. I went for the strikeout once I got to 0-2. Got to 1-2, and still went for the strikeout but also went for something on the ground again. I kind of brought it back closer. He hit a groundball. It kind of looked like it took a funny little hop or something.â€
Arenado couldn’t field Marte’s groundball cleanly. The grounder that initially appeared a candidate for an inning-ending double play, instead became an error by Arenado that allowed the Reds to score their third run of the day without an out recorded on the play.
“When you look at it, I think he’s in control,†Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said of Gray’s fifth inning. “I think he made his pitch. I trust Nolan to make that play every time.
“Unfortunately, it kicked up a little bit off the heel and we don’t turn it. But I think when you look at what Sonny did, he settled in and made the pitch to get the groundball there. He’s either going to go for the chase or try to get something on the ground there, and he did exactly that.â€
Gray exited the game with one run having scored on the error and the bases loaded with one out in the fifth inning. At that point, the score was still 3-1.
“I felt like I was OK,†Gray said of his pitch execution. “I definitely wasn’t sharp by any means. For the most part, I thought I made fine pitches. They did put the ball in play. It just didn’t go our way.
“Once that fifth inning went the way it does, it kind of felt like — after Marte’s at-bat — it kind of felt like the momentum was completely on their side. We were kind of flirting with it at the time. It kind of went to their side and that inning kind of just escalated on us.â€
Reliever John King got Nick Martini to line out to Winn at shortstop for the second out of the inning, but the Reds reeled off back-to-back two-run singles by Stuart Fairchild and Will Benson. The Benson single deflected off of the glove of the second baseman, Gorman, and caromed into center field.
Wynns doubled on a grounder down the third base line that Arenado got his glove on, but couldn’t scoop up. The double drove in the sixth run of the inning and ended the outing for King.
Two of the runs scored in the inning were charged to King, while the other four were charged to Gray.
The Cardinals hitters were held to just three hits through the first six innings, including a solo home run by first baseman Paul Goldschmidt (1 for 4) in the sixth. They added runs in the seventh and eighth innings.
Rookie right-hander Gordon Graceffo, a pitching prospect called up from the minors for the first time on Friday, made his major-league debut in relief. Graceffo allowed one run on three hits and two walks in 4 1/3 innings. He struck out four.
“It definitely gives you a lot of confidence,†Graceffo said. “You want to know that your stuff plays here, and that’s what I was trying to do. I was trying to put everything in the zone and attack these guys and show them what I’m about. I think I did a good job of that.â€
Graceffo’s innings were important in that they kept an already weary bullpen from having to carry the burden of covering the entire 4 2/3 innings remaining after Gray’s exit.
“We needed it,†Marmol said of Graceffo’s outing. “That’s why he’s here, to pick up innings like the ones he did today and for us to stay away from the rest of our pen and keep those guys fresh for tomorrow.
“Our guys, if I’m being quite honest, are on fumes. We need to dig deep, figure out a way to win tomorrow and then get to that off day and regroup and get back at it.â€