SAN FRANCISCO -- Jordan Montgomery came into Monday as the owner of two of the Cardinals' three quality starts on the season even though the manner that he had gotten there wasn’t exactly ideal.
Montgomery notched yet another quality start on Monday against the Giants, but he had little to nothing to show for it as the Cardinals continued to be unable to pair good pitching with strong hitting. A 4-0 loss to the Giants dropped the Cardinals to 0-8 in series openers, tying them with the worst start in franchise history in that category. To his credit, Montgomery didn’t let the hardest of hard-luck losses -- he didn’t surrender an earned run and was still saddled with the defeat -- break his resolve.
“I think we know we can play better baseball,” Montgomery said after the squad matched the 1988 Cardinals for the most consecutive series-opening losses to begin a season. “Fortunately, it’s super early in the season and we still have [130]-something games left, if not more. I think everyone knows how talented we are and what we’re capable of. We’re one winning streak from being right back where we need to be, so it’s kind of just keep playing.”
Montgomery kept playing on Monday even though he was forced to pitch through traffic most of the night. He came into the series opener against the Giants pitching well with the bases empty, holding foes to a .241 batting average in those situations. However, the opposition had hit a troubling .324 with runners on. That could have been particularly bad on Monday had Montgomery not made significant strides by working out of several early jams.
After pitching through a 31-pitch first inning, where he surrendered singles on each side of a walk to load the bases, Montgomery screamed into his glove after getting Wilmer Flores to strike out to end the inning. Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol liked seeing his left-hander eager to battle through a tough spot early in the night.
“That’s the most I’ve seen him pitch with an edge,” Marmol said of Montgomery, who pitched into the seventh and came within one pitch of matching his career high for pitches of 108. “He was really on, super competitive and didn’t want to come out of that game. He wanted that lefty [in the bottom of the seventh] and wanted one more hitter, which is perfect. He did his job.”
The Cardinals offense mysteriously did not do its job against San Francisco’s Alex Cobb, who allowed just six hits and fired MLB’s third complete-game shutout of the season. Six of the Cardinals' nine wins this season have come when they have scored six or more runs. However, they are just 2-12 when scoring four or fewer and 1-9 when scoring three or fewer.
“Of course, when you aren’t winning, you aren’t putting it all together,” said first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, who doubled off the wall in the fourth inning but made it no further than third base. “We’re trying to [put it all together], we’ll continue to try to do that and come out tomorrow and try to play well.”
Montgomery stranded seven Giants over the first four innings of the game. From the middle of the fourth to the top of the seventh, Montgomery retired eight straight hitters by purposefully leaning heavily on his changeup and a curveball he was more than willing to bury in the dirt. Marmol wanted to see progress from Montgomery with how he worked with runners on base and Monday he displayed plenty of grit and toughness.
“There are some things that he’s working on and that’s one of the topics, but his stuff was on, he mixed well, his sinker was down, and he got a ton of swing and miss,” Marmol said of Montgomery. “Overall, he just competed extremely well.”
Even though he was already at a season-high 104 pitches, Montgomery lobbied Marmol to stay in the game and face the left-handed-hitting Mike Yastrzemski in the bottom of the seventh of a scoreless game. Montgomery got the ground ball he wanted, but Gold Glove second baseman Tommy Edman uncharacteristically bobbled it for an error. Drew VerHagen relieved, and Yastrzemski came around to score the game’s first run on a sacrifice fly. A batter later, J.D. Davis put the score out of reach with a three-run homer.
Montgomery, he of the zero earned runs and six strikeouts, was the hard-luck loser in what was his best pitching performance of the season.
“I mean, I don’t give up hits to lefties, so of course I’m going to go out there and get [Yastrzemski],” Montgomery said of the juggled grounder. “Maybe in an alternate universe, I go toe-to-toe with Cobb a little longer. But it’s all good because I did the best I could.”