Monday, September 25, 2017
Associated Press
PITTSBURGH
The St. Louis Cardinals are running out of time to make their September surge extend their season beyond the first day of October.
Seung Hwan Oh’s difficult season hit another low point when he surrendered a go-ahead two-run homer to Pittsburgh’s Starling Marte in the fifth inning on Sunday as the Pirates pulled away for a 4-1 victory to blunt the Cardinals’ momentum heading into the regular season’s final week.
St. Louis dropped 21/2 games behind Colorado for the NL’s second wild card, mustering just four hits against Jameson Taillon and five relievers while falling to Pittsburgh for the second time in less than 24 hours. The Cardinals headed home for a seven-game homestand starting on Monday against the Chicago Cubs with little wiggle room left.
“Yeah we understand the urgency,” St. Louis manager Mike Matheny said. “We understand all the numbers. We just don’t spend too much time on them because they’re irrelevant to what we have to do. What we have to do is go play good baseball, that’s it.”
The Cardinals came into Pittsburgh riding a sweep of Cincinnati. They leave having dropped two of three to the Pirates. On Saturday night Pittsburgh chased Lance Lynn in the first inning of an 11-6 romp. On Sunday the Pirates relied on five strong innings from Taillon (8-7) and pounced when Oh (1-6) ran into trouble in the fifth.
With the score 1-1, Pat Bostick singled against Oh leading off the inning and Starling Marte followed with his seventh home run . The drive was the 10th allowed by Oh this season in 62 appearances. He gave up just five in 76 games a rookie in 2016.
“Obviously, everyone can see how it is, very tough,” Oh said through a translator. “None of the fastballs or off-speed pitches are working well.”
Jordan Luplow went deep an inning later off Brett Cecil to give Pittsburgh a three-run cushion. Taillon labored at times through his final home start of the season and needed 95 pitches to get 15 outs. He kept the Cardinals in check and five pitchers combined for hitless relief, with Felipe Rivero striking out two in a perfect ninth for his 19th save in 21 chances.
“The command was a little off, but he made pitches at crunch time throughout the game,” Hurdle said of Taillon. “His competitive fire was burning.”
Matt Carpenter hit his 22nd home run for St. Louis but the Cardinals went 0 for 6 with runners in scoring position and left eight men on base. St. Louis had a chance to close the gap in the seventh, loading the bases with two outs. Pittsburgh reliever George Kontos got Tommy Pham to hit into a forceout to end the threat.
“We were getting two outs, men in scoring position, bases loaded,” Matheny said. “Someone’s got to come through and do something really big and it didn’t happen. It’s not easy to do.”