Jordan blasts 1st Busch Stadium homer before exiting with injury

ST. LOUIS -- With a pitching staff under siege by injuries, innings limits and sporadic ineffectiveness, the Cardinals entered Thursday’s bullpen game needing all the help from their batting order that they could get.

Blaze Jordan provided some early run support, launching his first career Busch Stadium home run to put some wind behind the sails of the fleet of Cardinal arms destined to navigate the series finale against the Orioles at Busch Stadium.

The rookie third baseman Jordan planted a three-run blast onto Freese’s Lawn to open the game’s scoring in the bottom of the second. With six different pitchers combining to cover the nine innings, the Cardinals held on to beat the Orioles, 7-5.

But by the game’s end, Jordan wasn’t able to bask in the milestone moment.

In a key spot in the eighth inning, Cardinals reliever George Soriano threw toward Jordan at third, aiming to aggressively cut down the lead runner, Gunnar Henderson, who represented the potential tying run.

Jordan fielded the ball and tagged Henderson out on a close play at third, but he paid a physical toll, planting awkwardly with his left ankle in the process. After an on-field evaluation, Jordan left the playing surface gingerly with the trainer, not appearing to put much weight on the left leg.

The Cardinals had no immediate definitive update on the injury, but concern was evident in Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol’s description of Jordan’s absence.

"It didn't seem like a good thing," Marmol said. "I mean, he's gonna miss some time, most likely."

A three-run home run by Baltimore’s Coby Mayo against lefty Caleb Ferguson tightened the screws on the Cardinals in the seventh, leading to some tense moments as Soriano allowed another run in the eighth.

That’s when Jordan’s defensive play at third to tag Henderson -- which could cost the team in terms of the third baseman’s availability moving forward -- proved nearly as pivotal to the win as his early homer.

With the late injury souring the moment for the 23-year-old infielder, Jordan’s third home run of the campaign buoyed Gordon Graceffo’s longest outing of the season.

The early cushion is what the Cardinals needed to settle into the game on the pitching side. Graceffo turned in about as perfect of a performance as Marmol could have hoped for from his opener, rolling through the Baltimore lineup cleanly with four strikeouts -- nine up, nine down -- to kickstart the bullpen game.

“That was incredibly important,” Marmol said. “We wanted to take him one time through this lineup but for him to do it the way he did was awesome.”

For his part, Graceffo learned from Cardinals pitching coach Dusty Blake upon his arrival to the ballpark around 9:30 a.m. Thursday that he would be taking the ball first in the team’s bullpen game.

Aggression was the key to his efficient outing.

“Teams look at my numbers, and they see a higher walk rate than I would like,” Graceffo said. “I tried to use that to my advantage, almost, and just attack the zone. Get these hitters feeling a little off balance.”

Luis Gastelum was another highlight of the St. Louis reliever parade, continuing his recent stretch of dominance by retiring the four batters he faced with a pair of strikeouts.

Armed with a devastating changeup but needing to fine tune his effectiveness at the big league level, success for Gastelum wasn’t a given upon his promotion in July. His first month was rocky, with a two-run performance on Aug. 8 ballooning his ERA to 8.10.

But in a prime example of the type of player development benchmarks the Cardinals have sought in 2026, the club never seemed to consider a reactionary demotion for the struggling reliever, opting instead to stay the course with a talented young player through the learning curve.

In nine appearances since that blip on Aug. 8, Gastelum has dialed up 20 strikeouts to just one walk across his past 10 2/3 innings pitched, allowing just two runs (one earned) in that span.

“We talk about the gap between Triple-A and the big leagues, and it’s real,” Marmol said. “He got up here, he had some outings that didn’t go his way. We took a little bit of a break, cleaned some things up, allowed him to go back out there.

“We’re seeing a lot more consistent outings out of him, and they’ve been pretty dominant when it comes to just being able to miss a bat.”