ST. LOUIS -- By the time Cardinals first baseman Alec Burleson made his slow walk to first base after being hit by a pitch in the bottom half of the eighth inning on Wednesday night, it was far from assistant athletic trainer Chris Conroy’s first rodeo of the night.
And it certainly wasn’t his first of the season.
Cardinal batters added two more to a painful tally in Wednesday’s 7-0 loss to the Pirates at Busch Stadium: They lead the Major Leagues with 37 HBPs on the year.
In the sixth inning, Jordan Walker wore a 95 mph Yohan Ramírez sinker on the underside of the wrist. Walker stayed in the game initially, but was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning.
“That was more score-related than anything,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “If the score was any closer, he wanted that at-bat. … He’s totally fine.”
In the eighth, it was Pirates reliever Justin Lawrence who missed location with a sweeper that found an uncomfortable amount of Burleson’s left shin, though Burleson indicated postgame he’s no worse for wear.
One that clipped Nolan Gorman didn’t count toward the ledger -- but only because he swung at the breaking ball off his back foot.
When asked about the notion of simmering frustration surrounding the prolonged nature of this storyline, Marmol wasn’t looking to go there.
“Yeah, no. I’m aware,” he said flatly.
Ironically, it was a sequence in which a Cardinal narrowly avoided being hit by a pitch that cemented the team’s first loss to the Pirates in 2026.
The bases were loaded with two outs in the sixth when Ramírez nearly clipped César Prieto with a back-foot sweeper. When it happened, it was hard not to wonder how many runs it might cost the Cardinals that the pitch didn’t clip Prieto on the toe.
Understanding the role such an occurrence might have held toward a potential rally, Prieto wouldn’t have minded such an outcome one bit.
At first glance, it appeared Prieto leapt out of the way of the pitch. A keen eye on the replay, though, shows he kept his back foot still until the last moment, in case the baseball’s course was due to collide with it.
Prieto’s description backed that interpretation after the game.
“I really wanted that ball to hit me there,” Prieto said through team interpreter and Cardinals bullpen catcher Kleininger Teran.
Ramírez was wild throughout the inning, running Masyn Winn to a 3-0 count before battling back to strike him out leading into the Prieto at-bat.
After nearly getting hit, Prieto struck the next pitch with authority, sending a deep fly ball in the direction of the newly-minted "Tarps Off” section in the right-field bleachers at Busch Stadium.
There was a split second in which it seemed that the Cardinals had pulled off yet another stunning comeback. But after a warning track slide, Pirates right fielder Jake Mangum popped to his feet to show off his nifty snag.
Mangum robbed Prieto, not only of his elusive first hit of the season, but also of a potentially a bases-clearing, game-tying swing.
“Kind of our only shot in that game,” Marmol said of the potential big inning fizzling out with Mangum’s snare. “We didn’t do a whole lot outside of that. Prieto took a good swing. Would have been a pretty neat at-bat if that goes a little further.”
Pirates starter Carmen Mlodzinski came into his start Wednesday night with a track record of success against the Cardinals. With 20 2/3 innings logged against St. Louis over his past three years as a leaguer, Mlodzinski boasted a 2.18 ERA before stepping onto the Busch Stadium mound Wednesday.
When he departed the mound for the final time after five scoreless innings, the Cardinals were still left wondering how to solve this guy.
A day after slugging four home runs in a walk-off win, the Cardinals were held to just four hits by the Pittsburgh starter. They scratched out just five hits in the loss.
“I feel like we did grind him out,” Marmol said of his lineup’s approach against Mlodzinski. “You look at the at-bats, we had some lengthy at-bats. Pitch count was up. But not a ton to show from it, just stringing together hits… Didn’t have a ton of opportunity to break that game open or to just get on the board outside of [the sixth inning].”