Cards denied at home, fall in game of inches

With the count full, Paul DeJong was off and running the moment Royals reliever Scott Barlow went into his delivery. Yadier Molina lifted the ball high and deep, off the left-center-field wall. It would take an absolutely perfect relay to prevent the streaking DeJong from scoring the tying run in the bottom of the eighth inning on Tuesday night at Busch Stadium.

Unfortunately for the Cardinals, the Royals delivered exactly that.

Left fielder Whit Merrifield hit cutoff man Adalberto Mondesi, whose 90.7-mph strike home nailed DeJong at the plate. It was the signature moment of the Cards’ 5-4 loss to the Royals. And it was one of several missed opportunities that got the best of a St. Louis club that -- in the midst of such a daunting schedule -- needs to capitalize on such chances.

• Box score

“There were some missed opportunities out there, but we also created the opportunities,” said manager Mike Shildt, accentuating the positive. “We fought back and played our tails off.”

The Cards’ effort is unquestioned. They’ve met the merciful conclusion of their COVID-19 saga, with all affected players now cleared for baseball activities, and they’ve played with energy and a clear camaraderie in the early portion of this 53-games-in-44-days (including 11 doubleheaders) challenge.

But with so much at stake, the close losses that hinge on close plays sting just a little bit more. And on this night, the Cards’ effort and execution did not always align.

Save for a four-run outburst against Matt Harvey in the third inning, the offense was kept off the board. The Cards didn’t get that all-important tying run home when DeJong was thrown out at the dish. Nor did they get it home in the bottom of the ninth against old pal Trevor Rosenthal, who left Harrison Bader stranded at third after his one-out triple.

All of this shined an added -- and possibly unfair -- light on the four runs allowed by Adam Wainwright in his seven innings of work. That Wainwright pushed himself to and through the seventh in a game in which he did not have the characteristic command of his curveball was a testament to his ability to navigate his way through the dark. But it was ultimately not enough.

“It wasn’t easy tonight,” Wainwright said. “I was just grinding out there tonight. My cutter was OK. But at times I was so far jumping ahead of my arm that everything was kind of erratic early on.”

Wainwright was upset less for the game-tying solo shot he served up to Ryan O’Hearn in the sixth and more for the consecutive two-out walks he allowed to Hunter Dozier and Jorge Soler in the third that set up a Royals run.

“Two straight walks with two outs and nobody on?” he said. “That’s pretty hard to swallow.”

Likewise, third baseman Tommy Edman was, no doubt, kicking himself for his fifth-inning throwing error that allowed Cam Gallagher to score from second on a Merrifield single. And Cards reliever John Gant, who hadn’t allowed a run in 7 2/3 previous innings this season, must have certainly regretted the leadoff single and the two-out walk he surrendered in the eighth, setting up Ryan McBroom’s go-ahead, groundball RBI single.

It's a thin line sometimes, and this was a night in which the Cards were on the wrong side of it. In the fourth, they had Dylan Carlson’s impressive heave from left to nab a tagging Merrifield at third working in their favor. But the throw that mattered most was Mondesi’s, and it led to the inevitable question as to whether third-base coach Jose Oquendo was wrong to send DeJong, whose sprint speed of 25.9 feet/second was slower than the MLB average (27.0).

As Shildt noted, Oquendo’s coached third base longer than the 21-year-old Carlson has been alive. So he had no issue with the send.

“The ball comes off the wall, you’ve got to go get it,” Shildt said. “I’m sure [Oquendo] saw Pauly got a good jump at first. He took his shot. I trust his experience. I trust his experience 100 times out of 100.”

Maybe 99 times out of 100, the Royals don’t make the perfect play. But when it mattered, they did. And the Cards were forced to accept it and move on to the next in the long line of ballgames ahead of them.