Liberatore gives Cardinals needed length despite June woes

ST. LOUIS -- Matthew Liberatore’s June swoon continued on Wednesday night.

Liberatore was battered for six runs in the fourth as the Cardinals lost to the Diamondbacks, 9-4.

Liberatore went 5 1/3 innings, gave up eight hits, walked two and struck out three. All of the runs he allowed came in the fourth, as the Diamondbacks sent nine batters to the plate in a 28-pitch frame.

“They’re in the top of the league in just overall damage against left-handed starters, left-handed pitching in general,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “So, this was going to be a real test for him. So, the first three [innings] went well, and we just have to solve for the big innings against him. It happens more often than he would like, we would like, and it's something that we have to continue to figure out an answer for.”

It was the fourth straight subpar outing for Liberatore, who carries a 10.34 ERA in June (18 earned runs in 15 2/3 innings). The Cardinals' Opening Day starter is still searching for his first quality start since May 7.

“There's not necessarily a common denominator,” Liberatore said. “The ways that I'm getting beat each time in that inning are different. I'm sure at some point we will find that common denominator, and you know, I'm hungry to do that, because I’m tired of pitching like this, and I believe that I'm better than what I've done over the past month, for sure.”

The fourth inning started unraveling with some well-placed soft contact followed by some thunder.

Corbin Carroll’s leadoff single just eluded the diving glove of José Fermín at third and Tommy Troy’s RBI single to score Carroll dropped just out of the reach of a sliding Jordan Walker. Carroll’s hit left his bat at 77.4 mph and Troy’s left at 67.9 mph, according to Statcast.

Still, Liberatore was just an out away from limiting the Diamondbacks to a single run. But Ildemaro Vargas opened the floodgates with a two-run double. On the very next pitch, Liberatore grooved a 90.5 mph cutter to LuJames Groover, who blasted his first Major League homer. Two pitches later, Ketel Marte launched a 109.3 mph laser over the left-field wall to make it 6-1.

“Getting ahead of guys, I'm landing both breaking balls, my shapes, my velo is really good. I feel good about the way that I'm moving, I'm executing at a high level,” Liberatore said. “The problem lies within those pitches that I'm not perfectly executing, and sometimes I'm getting burnt on pitches that I do execute too, so it's a little mixture of both. It's just unfortunate that it's all happening in one inning like that.”

There were some positives for Liberatore. After pitching around a pair of first-inning singles, he set the D-backs down in order in the second and third. He also bounced back with a scoreless fifth.

“For him to go back out and get five of the next six outs, based on where our bullpen was, it was important,” Marmol said. “We can't just continue to tax the 'pen based on not going deep into games. There's going to be weeks where it flip-flops, where the starters are really good. That's just baseball. But our 'pen has been used pretty heavily, so him going back out and finding a way to get us some more outs in that game allowed us to use one less arm, which was important.”

The 5 1/3 innings was the longest outing Liberatore has had since May 31.

“I knew I was going to have to fill it up today,” Liberatore said. “I knew I was going to have to be creative in how I got ahead of guys, and I thought I did a pretty good job of that.”

Blaze Jordan’s two-out double scored Fermín to give the Cardinals a 1-0 lead in the second inning. Fermín set up the rally by working a leadoff walk after falling behind 0-2 and then stealing second to get himself in scoring position.

Jordan also drove in Fermín with a sacrifice fly in the fourth and singled home Lars Nootbaar in the ninth to notch his third multi-RBI effort in his first 12 games of his Major League career. Fermín, who homered in the ninth, scored three times.

Alec Burleson and Iván Herrera each extended their on-base streaks to 23 and 20 games, respectively.