ST. LOUIS -- For a team battling to stay in the hunt for the postseason and prove to its front office that it deserves support at the Trade Deadline, there’s no need to be particular about the way in which victories come. In the case of the Cardinals on Tuesday night, that meant waiting out a rain delay of two hours and 19 minutes ahead of a 4-2 victory over the Nationals.
“We weren’t sure if we were getting this one in,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “The guys stayed ready. It was good to answer back immediately after those two [runs, in the third].”
The win secured a victory for the Redbirds in the season series between the clubs, having previously swept Washington at Nationals Park from May 9-11.
Brendan Donovan, recently named to his first All-Star team, got the Cardinals on the board with a two-run homer in the bottom of the third inning, tying the game after Washington took the lead against Gray in the top half. Two batters later, Alec Burleson drove in Masyn Winn with what would turn out to be a game-winning double into the right-field corner.
Lars Nootbaar added a solo home run in the bottom of the sixth inning to account for the final margin.
“I think we kind of had an idea that it was going to be in a delay,” Donovan said. “I know from the position player standpoint, guys weren’t getting hot. They were just kind of waiting it out, and then whenever we did get an idea, that’s when we kind of started to ramp up.”
Sonny Gray started for the Cardinals and turned in five strong innings. He allowed just two earned runs and struck out six Nationals hitters en route to his team-leading ninth victory.
Whether he would start at all Tuesday night was thoroughly in question. The Cardinals shuffled their rotation during their Monday off-day, swapping Gray’s spot with Andre Pallante's. As a result, they’re able to sneak in an extra appearance for their ace prior to the All-Star break.
All of that planning, though, was nearly scuttled by rain clouds. Gray was under the impression that the game was on the verge of being postponed by weather on three separate occasions, and said that in one of those, “There was like a 30- to 45-minute stretch there at one point where the game was banged, and then it wasn’t banged. Just a weird delay.”
Steven Matz, Phil Maton, JoJo Romero and Ryan Helsley followed with shutout innings in turn to secure the win for St. Louis, just its second in its past seven games.
That bullpen alignment was made necessary by the team’s usage over the weekend in Chicago, but it also lined up in such a way that St. Louis’ core of its four most trusted relievers could be leaned on to lock down the back half of a challenging day at the ballpark.
Gray, after delivering just 70 pitches in his five innings of work, acknowledged that he reached the dugout after the fifth inning and made it clear to his manager that he’d given all he had for the night.
“You try to just do what you can to conserve energy, or whatever it is that you’re trying to conserve,” Gray explained, acknowledging that he didn’t have his best stuff. “I just told Oli after the fifth, I was like, ‘I’m done. I have nothing. I just don’t have anything.’ And then the bullpen did an incredible job of holding it down, and we added one.”
For the Cardinals, waiting out the rain – the time of game was two minutes longer than the delay – was a matter of urgency in part because of their early-season weather struggles. The team has yet to play a road game in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, and as a result, has had to deal with wet weather on the East Coast and Midwest throughout the first half.
St. Louis has played six doubleheaders already this season, the most in MLB, and the Cardinals were all too eager to avoid adding another to their ledger.
“We’ll probably be pretty happy that we’re not playing a doubleheader tomorrow,” Gray admitted.
As for Donovan, as the clock ticked on and he spoke to the assembled media, just before midnight, he was more than happy to hang around for as long as it took to put another notch in the win column – one per day, preferably.
“I’m very, very happy that it’s not a doubleheader,” he said with a grin. “I think I would’ve waited all night.”