News
Cardinals rout Tigers in series opener
Every starter notches a hit as Redbirds slam Verlander
By Matthew Leach / MLB.com
06/17/09 12:16 AM ET
ST. LOUIS -- Living up to their mantra, the Cardinals reached offensive nirvana on Tuesday night.Throughout their recent hitting morass, manager Tony La Russa and his players repeated the same motto: It's all about the quality of the at-bats. Improve in that area, and the runs will come. Against Justin Verlander and the Tigers, the at-bats were excellent and the runs were plentiful. The good work in support of Adam Wainwright yielded an 11-2 thrashing of Verlander and the AL Central-leading Tigers.
 |
When Verlander came into the strike zone with a fastball, they used his velocity to poke base hits the opposite way. When he was right on the edge of the zone, they fouled pitches off. They laid off of balls and swung at strikes, and when Verlander did provide a hittable pitch inside, they even turned on one or two. It was beautiful, textbook hitting against one of the best pitchers in the game.
"We tried not to spot him a strike," said Skip Schumaker, who led off the game with a double and scored the Cardinals' first run. "He's having a really good year, he's a really good pitcher, one of the best in the league in my opinion. Our approach was trying not to let a strike go by because he has so many weapons."
And yet even in such a blowout, it's easy to envision the game turning out completely differently. In a 180-degree turn from Sunday night's loss in Cleveland, Wainwright escaped from first-inning trouble while the opponent succumbed to it. Had that been reversed, so might the entire game have been.
After Schumaker's leadoff double, Colby Rasmus flied out and the Tigers walked Albert Pujols intentionally. Chris Duncan singled to left, but Schumaker did not score, and Rick Ankiel struck out. Yadier Molina waged a fierce nine-pitch at-bat before dropping a single into right field, scoring two runs. Duncan scored on a balk, and Joe Thurston doubled home the fourth run.
If Molina doesn't dig out the single, the entire game might have looked different.
"We haven't been scoring in bunches, and there's nobody throwing the ball better in either league than this guy," La Russa said. "I think it really came down to the at-bat by Yadi. That really set the tempo. The pitch was down and away. To dig that one out, all of a sudden ... then you get the big hit from Thurston. That changed the whole tempo of the game."
As did Wainwright's escape in the first. Don Kelly led off the game with a triple. Wainwright struck out Placido Polanco and made a nifty grab of Magglio Ordonez's comebacker. One out from dodging the trouble, though, he walked Miguel Cabrera and Curtis Granderson before Brandon Inge flied out.
The score could easily have been 2-0, 3-0 or even 4-0 in favor of the visitors. But thanks to Wainwright's guile and Molina's big hit, it was just the opposite. St. Louis tacked on another run in the fourth when Wainwright doubled and Schumaker doubled him home, and that was all for Verlander. It was the righty's shortest outing since Opening Day.
"You've got to be ready to go every time you face a guy like Verlander," Molina said. "He's one of the best pitchers right now. I was ready. We got the bases loaded and I was just trying to do my best to make contact. If you make contact, good things are going to happen. We did a pretty good job being aggressive in the zone, and you see what can happen when you're ahead in the count."
The scoring didn't just affect Verlander, either. The Redbirds kept piling on. Every Cardinals starter, including pitcher Wainwright, had a base hit in the rout. Seven different players scored a run, seven drove in a run, and everyone but Colby Rasmus did one or the other.
Wainwright, meanwhile, just got better while his offense kept attacking. He faced six batters and got them all to ground out in the second and third. He finished with a run on six hits, striking out five against two walks in his best performance since May 26. Wainwright had allowed at least three runs in each of his previous three starts.
"It was better," he said. "It was a lot better. I was down in the zone a lot more tonight. I was throwing most of my pitches for strikes and trusting my defense. When you're not afraid of contact, you're going to get a lot of quick outs. After the first inning I knew I had to settle down and luckily my offense did a great job."
Nate Robertson was charged with four runs without recording an out, and Ryan Perry served up the homers to Pujols and Duncan. Pujols' shot was a monster blast, traveling an estimated 446 feet and hitting the stairwell that rises behind the stands and light tower in left field. The Cardinals remained one game behind the Brewers in the National League Central.
Matthew Leach is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
