Wetherholt extends extra-base hit streak as Cardinals secure a dramatic win

PITTSBURGH -- For left-handed batters on a trip to PNC Park, there exists a fun side quest to the standard baseball proceedings -- before you board the team plane to the next city, can you park one in the Allegheny River? It’s not really something righties have to worry about -- unless you’re Paul Goldschmidt, anyway -- but it’s a point of pride for a lefty to put one in the water.

Cardinals center outfielder Victor Scott II did it in the third inning on Tuesday and there’s a non-zero chance that third baseman Nolan Gorman splashed down in that game, too. But nobody conclusively clocked the ball’s final whereabouts to count Gorman’s second-inning blast within the official lore.

On Wednesday night, though, the lefties in the St. Louis lineup didn’t seem to have the itch to add their names to any historical ledger -- a little opposite-field thump was sufficient to power the Cardinals in a 5-4 win over the Pirates.

Cardinals rookie JJ Wetherholt provided another display of his elite bat control, driving a Bubba Chandler fastball with authority toward the left-field corner for an RBI double in the third inning to open the scoring.

Wetherholt didn’t appear to be angling for anything other than getting the barrel to an up-and-away offering. It was a disciplined, bat-to-ball swing, but came off the bat at 100.1 mph to drive in Ramon Urías.

In the top of the fifth, Chandler nestled a slider over the heart of the plate to Alec Burleson, who stayed through the baseball to crack an opposite field home run an estimated 411 feet.

In a ballpark where pulling the ball as a power-hitting lefty can lead to a nice feather in your cap, Wetherholt and Burleson’s oppo pop carried the day.

The Cardinals added two more runs in the seventh inning, as Scott willed a run into existence. He stole both second and third on the same trip around the bases, then scored on an infield hit by Iván Herrera. The Cardinals catcher ended his night having scored two runs, one of which came on a Jordan Walker RBI single later in the inning.

Cardinals starter Andre Pallante was equipped with a particularly effective slider for the second straight outing as he used the pitch to elicit seven of his 12 swing-and-misses across six innings of one-run baseball.

Behind Pallante, Ryne Stanek struggled with his seventh-inning assignment, leading to a rescue mission by JoJo Romero. Though Romero allowed a two-run hit to tighten the score, he retired Marcell Ozuna on a key groundout to end the threat with the Cardinals leading by two.

George Soriano’s eighth inning was anything but clean, with an untimely -- and seldom seen -- error by Masyn Winn contributing to the Pirates cutting the deficit to one.

With any margin for error evaporated, the Cardinals called on their hard-throwing closer Riley O’Brien to end the game for good. Ryan O’Hearn hit a one-out single to keep Pittsburgh alive, and with him on first and two outs in the ninth, the red-hot Nick Gonzales represented the last chance for the Bucs. He gave O’Brien’s first pitch -- a slider up in the zone -- a good ride to left field, where Nathan Church leaped to potentially rob a walk-off homer and seal the win.