Cardinals showed resilience in lead-up to series-opening comeback win

PITTSBURGH -- In the Cardinals’ outright defiance of win probability charts everywhere on Monday night with their 4-2 win in Pittsburgh, JJ Wetherholt’s home run was in every headline.

Rightfully so, given the homecoming flair of the Mars, Pa. native’s return to PNC Park.

It’s a place where -- as the rookie was sure to point out to reporters Sunday in St. Louis ahead of this midweek trip -- his West Virginia Mountaineers had bested Pitt each time that the Backyard Brawl played out on the diamond with Wetherholt involved.

But lost amid his homecoming heroism straight out of a baseball fairytale are some understated aspects of the Cardinals’ comeback outside of Wetherholt’s game-tying wonder.

Through 6 2/3 innings against four different pitchers, the Cardinals had absolutely nothing working -- and they knew it. But they weren’t going to be fazed by it.

“We knew we were getting perfect gamed,” Jose Fermin said. “But we were not freaking out. We knew that, at some point, it was going to happen.”

Alec Burleson broke the streak of 20 outs to start the game with his single in the seventh. Fermín added on with a hard-hit single in the eighth -- he adjusted his swing to sharply pull a slider while expecting a fastball -- but the Cardinals still couldn’t break through on the scoreboard.

But the moments that led up to Wetherholt’s game-tying homer -- and beyond -- were indicative of a team that has insisted publicly, dating back to the spring, that it would pride itself upon playing with intent until the final out.

“In spring, you have to create some framework for how you want this group to operate mentally,” manager Oli Marmol said over the weekend as the Cardinals navigated what piled up into a four-game losing skid that the team carried into Pittsburgh on Monday. “What you have to build into that framework is we can't care about gut punches and let them last longer than a night.”

Rather than let Monday night spiral into a fifth-straight loss -- which was the expected result, given how they fared over the first 6 2/3 innings without a baserunner -- the Cardinals got to work.

Down two in the ninth, Pedro Pagés slugged a one-out home run ahead of Wetherholt to put the Cardinals on the board. Wetherholt’s swing tied the game. But to win, St. Louis needed another fresh rally.

Iván Herrera walked and Burleson landed a cue shot on the chalk to bring up Jordan Walker, whose previous at-bat saw him take strike two and strike three with the bat on his shoulders -- perhaps an overcorrection to avoid falling into the trap of chasing tough breaking pitches.

In a key spot in the ninth, though, Walker saw spin again -- and spit on it. Walker took breaking balls off the plate in 1-2 and 2-2 counts to run the count full, eventually taking the 3-2 pitch inside to load the bases ahead of Fermín’s game-winning hit.

“It’s a big part of that game,” Marmol said. “Sets that bases-loaded situation up, and if he doesn’t control the strike zone, that doesn’t happen. I know we look at hard-hit rate and homers, but him starting to do that in meaningful situations is also important.”

Walker’s power swings -- he has eight home runs on the year -- have drawn attention from around the league. But in the context of the Cardinals passing the baton to construct an improbable comeback win, Walker’s growth in a more understated moment like Monday’s ninth inning is plenty loud.

“Now you stack those on top of each other over time,” Marmol said. “That’s what’s important.”

After six perfect innings by Pittsburgh's pitching staff on Monday, the Cardinals halted the other kind of stacking -- losses.

Refusing to give in to what conventional wisdom suggested would have been the continuation of a skid is the latest example of the Cardinals’ relentless approach, one that eschews whatever the outside probabilities might have to say about their fate.